


No Strings Attached

by delicaterosebud



Category: Bleach
Genre: ...But Also Still Enemies, Dom/sub Undertones, Emotional Constipation, Enemies to Lovers, Established Relationship, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pining, Rape Fantasy, Romance, Violent Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:54:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 35,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22141375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delicaterosebud/pseuds/delicaterosebud
Summary: When Kurotsuchi’s makeup comes off every night, he becomes a man so lovely, it shakes Zaraki’s legendary, unflinching confidence. What starts as a purely physical, enemies with benefits relationship quickly spirals out of control, leaving Zaraki confused and scrambling to reconcile the juxtaposition between old prejudices and newfound, unwelcome desires.All he knows is that, one way or another, Kurotsuchi Mayuri will be the death of him.
Relationships: Kurotsuchi Mayuri/Zaraki Kenpachi
Comments: 59
Kudos: 120





	1. Chapter 1

It was never anything more than casual sex. It was the kind of dirty, hardcore, secretive relationship that had men sweating bullets every time they passed a temple. As addictive as it was, however, as passionate as it always became, it didn’t amount to much of anything, in the end. 

_They_ didn’t amount to anything. 

Kurotsuchi wasn’t the type of partner that he could ever acknowledge in public when the man himself was so unrepentantly vile. Admitting to bedding Kurotsuchi, of all people, was as good as tearing open the Gates of Hell, inviting the mocking jeers of every man who heard of the scandal through the grapevine. Bedding a pig wouldn’t have thrown Zaraki into half as much disgrace. When he couldn’t even begin to comprehend the shame, he knew that Kurotsuchi was a lover better kept in the dark, shoved into the back of his closet with the rest of his skeletons. 

Considering the secrecy of their relationship, the little white lies and the lies by omission, they were a far cry from proper lovers. They’d worked together for over a century, and yet Zaraki didn’t know the first thing about the man: not what kind of food he liked or what he did for fun, apart from scribbling at some desks and bending over others. They couldn’t even be called friends with benefits when there wasn’t anything friendly about them. Kurotsuchi was more a one-night stand that just so happened to have a little longevity. He invited him back, night after night. 

Gods, but he was sick; Zaraki couldn’t stop himself. 

Not when Kurotsuchi was as wild in the bedroom as he was outside of it. Scrappy and fearless, fierce and bold, where the women that Zaraki had brought back in the past were all kinds of animal-wary: doe-eyed and foal-legged. Staring at his dirty apartment and his mess of sweaty clothes, they’d inch back towards the door, losing interest by the second. He wasn’t naïve. He knew they stayed only for the bragging rights, to claim they seduced a man of his rank and power. It was always the same song and dance: those women, laying corpse-still, eyes screwed shut against the dark. Missionary with the lights turned off. Zaraki wanted something a little bit more passionate. It was a damn shame that it had to come from Kurotsuchi, but if that was the way it had to be, then Zaraki could live with that. Even if he couldn’t stand that nasty old bastard once the sun came up, Zaraki had to admit that, as far as lovers went, Kurotsuchi wasn’t bad. 

Maybe he was even the best he’d ever had.

For two hours or maybe three hours, night after night, their short, little fuse burned brighter than the sun. Flames licking up to the sky, it blazed, and it crackled, it howled and roared, only to sputter out to ashes when the magic wore away.

It was never enough. It left Zaraki wanting, every single time. 

It was casual sex. That twisting tightness in his chest, crushing his ribs and tugging at his tendons, was only lust and nothing more. Zaraki was fine with the status quo. Fine with two-hour passion and the following frigidity. Fine with sleeping alone, and going to work, and realizing that Kurotsuchi wouldn’t even look at him when daylight came. 

He was fine with all of it. 

As the days went on, however, it became harder for Zaraki to remind himself of that. He had to start reciting the facts to himself every morning, just to keep himself grounded: it was only ever casual sex, and it wasn’t as though he wanted more. Every time he passed the towering gates of the Twelfth, however, Zaraki began to doubt. From the distant road, he could see it beckoning to him. It called to him, a mesmerizing chant. Sunlight crawled, lethargic, upon the moss-covered statue of Jizō Bosatsu, keeping its eternal, silent vigil. 

There was always incense burning at its altar. Kurotsuchi hung charms from its shrine and left little offerings during the holidays, but he didn’t fool Zaraki. Not for a second. That cynical bastard didn’t believe in anything, much less in gods or holiness. Placing that stone figure in front of his gate was nothing more his bad attempt at perpetuating a cosmic joke. That a heathen’s Zanpakutō should share the name of a holy man was somehow the most entertaining notion that Kurotsuchi had held in ages. Zaraki didn’t see what was so damn funny about it, but his partner always had a strange taste for irony. Good and evil were two sides of the very same coin, nothing more than social constructs, based on perception. The twin Jizōs were evidence enough of that. It was a philosophy that Kurotsuchi had explained in the meeting hall, once, and something that Zaraki hadn’t understood. 

Not until one bright, summer morning, when he’d glanced at that very same statue that he’d seen a thousand times in the past, only to feel a new, unfamiliar wave of feeling overcome him, seeking asylum. It melded deep with his perpetual shame, coming together like oil and water, coexisting yet distinct in its color. It wasn’t until he saw Kurotsuchi again, later on that evening, that Zaraki recognized the feeling as longing. 

It horrified him, sending rancid bile bubbling up his throat. 

Disgusting as it was, wrong as it was, it had been the very first time that Zaraki had considered whether it was possible to have some variation of fondness, or at the very least some misguided attachment, for someone that he hated. In the face of Zaraki’s turmoil, Jizō Bosatsu offered no answers. It smiled back at him, calm and expressionless, every bit as enigmatic as the man who burned incense at its altar.

______________________

It must have been another cosmic joke, another bout of ironic absurdity, for a man as horrifically ugly as Kurotsuchi to look as lovely as he did, beneath the pomp and circumstance. 

Beneath his makeup, he was… beautiful. 

That was a revelation that would never sink in, no matter how many times Zaraki witnessed the miracle. Every time, it stunned him. Bare-faced and naked, Kurotsuchi carried himself with all the effortless confidence of a man who knew he was handsome – and who couldn’t care less about the fact. Zaraki didn’t know whether it was beauty or the confidence that held him like a spell. 

All he knew was that he’d been cursed from the start, plagued with a deep and solemn desire, a heated lust, in spite of his disgust for the man, when the paint came back on. With every night, the longing grew, a potent poison in his veins. It spread like ivy, slow and sinister, yet with the strength to pierce through concrete. It set his heart racing every time he saw it: the shamelessness and beauty. 

Every time he left him after sex, whether bleeding on the desk or collapsed in the corner, he wanted, not to rub salt in Kurotsuchi’s wounds, but to pick him up and hold him close. The desire, the revulsion – it tormented him. _Kurotsuchi_ tormented him, haunting his nightmares in the darkness and his daydreams in the light.

It was enough to make a man sick. 

Zaraki couldn’t deny it any longer. He was _sick_. Painful as the prospect was, he couldn’t keep living the way that he did, limiting himself to two hours of bursting, beautiful color every night, only to return to dullness and drudgery once the spell was broken. He had to find the remedy. Something had to change sooner or later. Either that, or he’d succumb to the inertia and gravitas. 

With Kurotsuchi kneeling on the floor after yet another night, Zaraki stood, silent, with his back against the wall. It made for a pathetic sight: a towering goliath, fully clothed, brought to heel by a naked man, defeated and shivering. Zaraki knew, however, that appearances were deceiving, when it came to Kurotsuchi. Small as he was, that man was anything but a helpless lamb. Though every one of Zaraki’s better judgements screamed at him to kick that snake out into the cold and restore some semblance of normalcy to his life, when he inched closer, when he looked down at the man, pity took the place of reason. Zaraki cleared his throat and tried his best to quiet his voice. 

“You want to spend the night?” he asked, feigning nonchalance – and half expecting Kurotsuchi to laugh him out of the room for being soft enough to ask. He’d always spat in the face of charity, that cynical son of a bitch. Whether he was the target of such kindness or not was inconsequential, both, equally worthy of his scorn. 

Zaraki sucked in an anticipatory breath and waited for Kurotsuchi’s vitriol. He waited and waited, but the venom never came.

In its place, Kurotsuchi went silent. He sighed a sigh so deep and weary, it sunk his shoulders, robbing the strength from his quivering bones. 

Staring, paralyzed, Zaraki swore that he could feel the weight of it. It froze the blood in his veins. Turned his limbs to lead. Kurotsuchi stood, and Zaraki made way for the king, watching in muted horror as bright, red blood trickled down his thighs and pooled around his ankles. It sank into the cracks of the worn, tatami mats, seeping down into the belly of the earth.

“It’s fine if you want to stay,” he continued, mumbling under his breath. The timidity shamed him, considering the war that came before it. Zaraki stretched his back, and he felt his wounds reopen. Angry, parallel rows in perfect sets of five began to slowly crack and splinter, exposing fresh, warm blood to the open air. The part of Zaraki that was the most base could not help but hope that the wounds would scar. “It’s better than walking back in the rain.” 

“On the contrary,” Kurotsuchi mumbled, before flicking his tongue over his busted lip. Zaraki focused in on that quick flash of bright pink, searing the color into his memory. He swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. “Trudging about in the storm, waist deep in mud, would make for quite a fitting walk of shame, now, wouldn’t it?” 

“Yeah right,” he scoffed, glancing down at him in a lethal, intolerable combination of desire and disgust. “You’ve never been ashamed of anything in your life, whether it’s blowing up your own men, beating the shit out of your daughter, or bending over for me. You don’t give a damn about anything. …But you might as well stay, if that’s the way it is.” 

“You’re strangely insistent about that. What are you trying to accomplish by keeping me here?”

“I ain’t trying to ‘accomplish’ anything. Why do you always so damn suspicious of me?” Zaraki quipped back, already regretting his decision to offer him a bed. “I’m trying to do the right thing, for once. I owe you that much. I know we ain’t friends,” and they sure as hell weren’t lovers, “but you’re still…”

Kurotsuchi’s golden irises slid towards the corners of his eyes, glancing at him from the edge of his peripheral vision. Wide-eyed and unnervingly expressionless, the man showcased nothing but a meager curiosity, accompanied only by a gentle tilt of his head.

“Do continue,” Kurotsuchi prompted, refusing to let him go so easily. “What am I? ‘We are not friends,’ you say, ‘but I am –‘”

“Nothing.” Zaraki muttered, barely audible. Kurotsuchi was nothing. “I just feel responsible for fucking you up. That’s all I’m saying.” 

“What. Are you talking about this?” Kurotsuchi scoffed, swiping his thumb against his lower lip. When he pulled it back, holding his hand towards the light, his dark skin shimmered a bright and beautiful crimson. “This is no different than any other night.”

“No, it is. You always look like shit after I’m done with you, but it’s never been this bad. Look… we don’t have to make this awkward. You can take the bed, and I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“My, how very generous: a pox-infested set of blankets,” Kurotsuchi replied in unamused monotone, holding eye contact as he smeared his bloody thumbprint onto Zaraki’s shelf in protest. “One night curled up in that mess, and I’ll be dragging bedbugs back to the Twelfth.”

In truth, Zaraki had been expecting a rejection from the start, but not one professed with such scathing revulsion. Caught off guard, his mind went blank, leaving him helpless. Tongue turned to lead, all he could was watch in paralyzed silence as Kurotsuchi’s condescending scowl slowly turned upward. Baring his teeth, slowly, what had started as quiet hum turned into roaring, all-out laughter, shrill and cruel and piercing.

Kurotsuchi was laughing at _him_. 

Tightening his fists by reflex, Zaraki regretted ever showing him pity. He should have knocked out Kurotsuchi’s teeth when he still had the chance. 

“You’re an ass,” he interjected, cutting off his incessant cackling. “You know, every time we do this, and I see you bleeding on the floor, I feel sorry for you – and I start thinking that maybe you ain’t as big of an asshole as I always thought you were. But then you start saying stupid shit like this, and you prove me wrong, every damn time.”

“Of course, I do,” Kurotsuchi sneered back at him, “What did you expect from me?”

In truth, upon further reflection, Zaraki didn’t know what it was he was expecting. Gratitude, perhaps, or maybe just a little bit of recognition – a trace of mutual understanding that they meant something, _anything_ , more to each other than just the simple sum of their parts. But even in the face of his kindness, Kurotsuchi was just as dismissive of him as he always was. 

Wordlessly, Kurotsuchi turned his back to him and began gathering up his discarded clothing. 

“I don’t know,” Zaraki said, “Some damn decency, for once?” 

Clearly, Kurotsuchi hadn’t been expecting a response. At the first sound of Zaraki’s voice, he paused, frozen, half-reaching for his hat. From behind him, Zaraki could see the slow shift of his vertebrae, one bone at a time, as he straightened his back. 

“Have you ever heard the tale of the farmer and the viper?” Kurotsuchi asked, suddenly, after some time. The question, coming out of nowhere, caught him off guard, leaving him stammering.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Zaraki asked.

Ignoring his question, Kurotsuchi pressed on, undeterred. 

“One frigid, winter night, a farmer awakens to find a viper curled on his doorstep. The creature, freezing and hungry, teeters on the brink of death. Upon closer inspection, he recognizes the marks on its body and identifies it as the very viper that had been killing his sheep all throughout the autumn months, causing his family unspeakable hardship. Though he has the opportunity to dispose of the beast, the farmer is a generous man. He takes the viper into his home and cradles it in his lap, warming it beside the fireplace. Under his care, the creature slowly stirs and looks up towards its savior. As thanks for the farmer’s act of heroism, the viper turns and bites him on the wrist, killing him instantly, before slithering up the stairs towards his wife and infant daughter.”

Zaraki blinked back at him, dumbfounded and confused, waiting for the punchline – but Kurotsuchi simply grabbed his makeup kit and started making his way to the bathroom.

“And?” Zaraki asked with an incredulous scoff.

“That’s it,” Kurotsuchi shrugged. “It’s a cautionary tale. Never second guess a person’s nature. Even in this room, bare-faced and injured, I am still the man you’ve always known. You won’t be getting any decency out of me.”

He looked so handsome with that bold smile, fiercely cunning, with his golden eyes, just barely hidden behind a veil of dark, blue hair. Reaching behind him, Kurotsuchi gathered up his braid and pulled it over his shoulder, tugging out the ribbon. 

“That why you dress up like a monster?” he muttered. “So no one ever doubts what kind of guy you really are?”

“Would you prefer that I presented myself like this in an active attempt to deceive the others through good appearances? To make them believe that I am any less dangerous than I truly am?” He spread his arms wide, shamelessly showcasing his body. Kurotsuchi was shockingly thin, beneath his haori: soft and frail. A scholar’s frame. Bone-white makeup hid tanned skin, never calloused. “Well… there’s an idea. People are easily swayed by pretty words and comely faces. It’s a glaring failure of the human condition. I am certain that even the most unsavory of my experiments would be met with far less criticism, were they presented by a man who looked like this. …Perhaps _I_ would be met with far less criticism. You’d hardly be the only man I’d lure to my side. I can already imagine it: everywhere I walk, I am surrounded by a swarm of potential partners, simpering sycophants, all of them. Why, I’d have to start batting them away just to clear my path forward. Or perhaps I could take my pick. Perhaps I could find a worthy man who venerates me like a king instead of being stuck, here, with a filthy brute who ravages me as though I were nothing more than a punching bag.”

It was all talk. Kurotsuchi would never leave him, especially for someone who treated him well. He came to him precisely _because_ he fucked him hard and smacked him around. Even so, the implication was clear: he could do better, easily, when he looked the way he did. Underneath that mess of makeup and gold, Kurotsuchi was precisely the type of sullen, tanned, little pretty boy that the women of Seireitei couldn’t resist. On top of that, he was clever. A hard worker, an ambitious leader, and a good conversationalist. He’d have had no problem finding a lover, or even a spouse, if only he’d change his horrible sense of style – and drop the attitude.

Compared to him, Zaraki was an ogre.

“You know what? Forget I said anything,” he replied, turning his back to him to pick up the fragments of broken cups and plates, knocked off the table through the course of the night. “Hurry up, do what you need to do, and get the hell out of my house.”

“I never intended to do otherwise. I’ve spent far too much time here, already. I can practically feel the bedbugs biting.”

Without so much as a parting word, Kurotsuchi grabbed his things and disappeared behind the bathroom door. Zaraki could hear the turning of the locks and the slide of his door stopper – as if Kurotsuchi really didn’t trust him to resist the urge to go barging in. 

As though he hadn’t seen him naked, already. 

There was nothing new about it. He’d seen Kurotsuchi in far more compromising positions that stepping into a shower, of all things. 

From the other side of the bathroom door, which may as well have been a sealed vault, at that point, Zaraki could hear the gentle squeak of his shower faucet and the steady stream of water – scalding hot. As though Kurotsuchi couldn’t leave his house without throwing one last metaphorical “fuck you” his way, the rat bastard always drained his hot water after every shower. He dirtied all his clean towels and tossed them right on the bathroom floor, right next to the bin, before disappearing wordlessly into the night. For the hundredth time, Zaraki considered living up to Kurotsuchi’s most derogatory perceptions of him. One day, he would barge through that door and drag him out by his hair before he could even think of making another mess. 

But Zaraki knew it wasn’t the time. 

When he looked down at the blood on the floor and at the little clump of long, blue hair discarded on his desk, he decided, once again, to stay his hand and leave him be, just like he always did. Kurotsuchi could rack up the water bill all he wanted. It was easier to ignore the annoyance and consider it payment for the thrilling displeasure of his company. 

In the meantime, Zaraki busied himself with cleaning up the mess: the broken lightbulbs and torn papers, the chairs, strewn about in the frenzy. Even in the middle of chores, however, Zaraki couldn’t stop his mind from wandering back to the treasured, reviled memories of their time together. 

He tried to focus on the hatred and the violence, of Kurotsuchi, clawing at his hands as Zaraki tightened his grip around his neck. Kurotsuchi, growling at him in protest, spitting blood against his cheek when he was too beaten down to struggle. 

Unpleasant as the memories were, they were better than the alternative – remembering the curl of his toes and the quiet whimpers when he came. He was always brash, at first, but Kurotsuchi was a startling quiet lover, at the end of it all, once the pride and the outrage were beaten out of him. It was every bit as terrifying, as horrific, as it was unexpectedly beautiful. 

Zaraki was never going to cure himself with thoughts like that.

After almost an hour, the bathroom door slammed open. A haze of steam, obscuring Zaraki’s view, burst into the living room, and Kurotsuchi emerged in full regalia, cold and pristine against the backdrop of his living room. His headdress shimmered in the moonlight, all polished gold, just like his false beard and his piercing eyes. With his face, fully painted, and his wounds, sewn and healed, it looked almost as though he’d never been touched. Not by Zaraki. Not by anyone. He looked like a pharaoh brought back from the Duat, perfectly preserved, walking straight out of the pyramids. He’d wander the world in search of his canopic jars.

Kurotsuchi the king was something monstrous – and he was perfect, perhaps even more than the man underneath the mask. Zaraki didn’t know whether to disparage that costume, if only out of habit, or to finally give in and admit, in stunned disbelief, that he was beautiful in spite of it. Before Zaraki could make up his mind or to foolishly ask, once again, for him to stay, Kurotsuchi had already returned his makeup case to its hiding place beneath the broken floorboard underneath Zaraki’s rug. 

It was hidden in the dark with the rest of his skeletons. 

Without so much as a wave goodbye, Kurotsuchi stalked right past him and was halfway out the door. He didn’t even turn to look at him as he left. Zaraki knew that he shouldn’t have felt as betrayed as he did, when Kurotsuchi didn’t owe him anything. It was only casual sex. They’d both gotten what they’d wanted; there wasn’t anything left between them, there was nothing holding them together, once the transaction was complete. Their spark had caught on its wick, and blazed, and burned out for the evening, smothered by the shower stream. 

What charming spell had held them had finally been broken. 

It was the same as every other night, and yet at that particular moment, Zaraki couldn’t stop a wave of familiar emotion from washing over him. It was the same melancholic desire that he’d felt every day, as of late, passing by the statue of Jizō Bosatsu. For some strange reason that he couldn’t discern, every time Kurotsuchi left him, it became just a little bit harder for Zaraki to stand by his window and track his movements from the glass. It pained and it soothed him. It was an agonizing balm, watching Kurotsuchi’s distinctive, kingly figure disappear into the darkness, walking farther and farther away from him. 

That night, when he saw Kurotsuchi pass the gate, he couldn’t bear to watch him any longer. Zaraki turned his head away from the window and distracted himself with the cleanup. When he gathered up the loose lock of hair on his desk, however, when he twisted the strands, strong and bright as cobalt, around his fingers, he cut off his blood and let his fingers turn blue, pretending he’d been plagued by the viper’s bite.


	2. Chapter 2

Crumpled beer cans overflowed from the wastebaskets, spilling to the floor in a silver cascade. One after another, they rolled into the hallways, venturing into the nooks and furthest crannies of his home. Zaraki would catch a glimpse of the lost ones, now and then, hidden beneath a desk or jammed behind an open door. Every new discovery left him with a deepening sense of shame, forcing him to confront the undeniable evidence of just how far he’d fallen. Zaraki had always been a heavy drinker, but he’d never been quite so attached to the bottle as he was, now that he’d started seeing Kurotsuchi in earnest. Zaraki didn’t know what he was trying to accomplish by drinking himself sick: whether he did it to forget the shame, or if he did it to stew in his softer memories. 

Either way, even when he lay, drunk, barely clinging to consciousness, he was always thinking of Kurotsuchi. 

Smothered by the heavy, sloshing weight of still-fermenting booze in his gullet, Zaraki struggled to return to the waking world, even when the morning sun cast its glare over his eyes. Still wandering, half-lost in hazy sleep-thoughts, Zaraki held his pillow to his chest and imagined it was _him_. Whining weakly, he wove his arms around the fabric, squeezing tight, and buried his cheek against the cotton. If only he were undisturbed, comforted by the warmth and the silence, Zaraki would have been content to sleep for another thousand years.

It was only the scent that snapped him out of his reverie. 

His pillow, his bedding, sweat-stained and stale, smelled nothing like the man who walked his dreams. The cold realization jerked him awake, violently tugging him back into the land of the living. Dry, bloodshot eyes snapped open, blinded by the light. The shock of his discovery left him reeling. Struck by nauseating disbelief, Zaraki looked down at the pillow in his arms and felt the slow chill of revulsion quiver down his spine. Rancid bile broiled deep within the pit of his stomach. Sickened, he slammed his fist against his pillow and threw against the wall, muttering a string of sour curses at the slowly falling feathers.

He didn’t know what angered him more: the fact that it wasn’t Kurotsuchi or the fact that he could no longer deny that, in his dreams, when he was most true to himself, Zaraki had sincerely wanted it to be. He couldn’t run from that reality when the memory was so fresh in his mind’s eyes. His arms, wrapped around a thin, tanned frame and his cheek, buried in his hair. 

Even fully awake, Zaraki found that his longing hadn’t waned. All the thoughts that had plagued him in his slumber were now beginning to bleed into the waking world. He glanced at his pillow and cursed; he wanted to chase after Kurotsuchi just a little while longer: his silhouette, the sound of his voice. 

His scent. 

Zaraki swore that he would never forget the smell of it. It was a horrible blend of scents: henna and formaldehyde, myrrh and methanol. Fragrant oils and embalming fluid, sweet and warm and gooey in all the right places and always just as sharp. It elicited images of a pharaoh’s tomb, all perfume cones and corpse rot. Even in reincarnation, when a soul was stripped of its sense of self, even after he’d forgotten everything, Zaraki was certain that Kurotsuchi’s scent could return even his memories from the abyss of death and restore him to the man he used to be. Memories of golden eyes and soft, blue hair would drag him back from the Duat with a slightly lighter heart.

It was with those airy thoughts in mind, still half-dreaming of him, that Zaraki crawled out of bed and forcibly broke his inertia. But he paused, suddenly, when he caught sight of the furled corner of his living room rug, the angle, askew. He hadn’t noticed it last evening, but Kurotsuchi hadn’t bothered to straighten it when he’d tucked his makeup kit back into its usual hiding place. Eyes glued to the floorboards, Zaraki was struck, suddenly, by the indescribable urge to tear them open and dig out Kurotsuchi’s makeup and all his little perfume bottles. Zaraki knew that he was in too deep. Every time that he caught wind of that scent, he’d feel the same, intolerable tingle of arousal shooting down the base of his spine. The desire, the memories, hit him like lightning, sudden, loud, and just as bright. Wondrous in its violence. What Zaraki wanted to accomplish with such an of thievery, he didn’t know. Perhaps he’d smear a little oil on his wrists and snake his hands beneath his sheets just to feel a little closer to him – and perhaps he’d break out in hives as punishment for his impudence. 

Kurotsuchi would know what he’d done, and the shame, the guilt, would be exactly what Zaraki would deserve. 

Shivering, he smothered down his basest urges, and kicked his rug back into place. And Zaraki turned away, rushing into his bathroom before the urge to tear up his floorboards could take hold of him in earnest. As he stepped into the shower, for the first time in his life, he was grateful for the ice-cold water. It chilled him to the bone, ripping his thoughts away from Kurotsuchi and forcing him to focus in on the blueness of his toes and the frigid stiffness of his knees. For a moment, he was able to forget him, entirely – though the fates didn’t see it fit to grant him even a single, lingering respite. When he squeezed a swirl of thick shampoo into his palm, when he wove it into his hair and smelled familiar notes of stale, cheap pine, Zaraki’s thoughts couldn’t help but drift back into the pyramids. To the cobwebs and the coffins, the gold and the cobalt. 

Even as frigid water rained down upon him, unrelenting, the memory of myrrh and methanol, melted the skin from his bones, and a warmth settled deep within his heart.

__________________________________

Anxiously digging at the dirt beneath his fingernails, Zaraki waited restlessly at his tea table. Though his empty stomach twisted, he couldn’t bring himself to focus on his flat beer and untouched supper. He couldn’t bear to look away from the door. He’d been watching it for hours, now, silently waiting, with bated breath, for the moment when the lock would turn and kick his frozen world back into motion. But ten minutes passed, and then fifteen, and when he finally counted thirty, he grew too restless to sit idly any longer. He pushed himself to his feet and stormed into the kitchen, determined to find a better way to pass the time. He was just about to scrape his supper into the garbage, still overflowing with beer cans, when, finally, he heard the sound of the key sliding into his door. 

It stopped his heart like a knife through the chest, piercing between his ribs and twisting deep into the muscle. He didn’t need to ask the name of his visitor to know that it was Kurotsuchi. In all his years, he’d crafted only two spare keys.

The first had belonged to Yachiru. She’d clipped a little plastic rabbit to the ring and kept it dangling at her hip, right alongside her woven lanyard and sparkling cartoon keychains. He could still remember the sight of that key, painted pink with glued glitter and sparkling sequence, shimmering dazzlingly in the morning sun. Never had he ever imagined that something so charmingly youthful would end up six feet under the earth, one day, buried in a shoebox in an empty grave. Though Zaraki was able to reason, logically, that Yachiru’s spirit wasn’t far from his own, when he could no longer see her, that knowledge didn’t soothe him. It didn’t curb the steadily encroaching sense of solitude that had begun to overtake him since the day that she’d vanished. 

Zaraki had to admit that, without her, he was lonely.

Perhaps that was why, in a moment of weakness, he had crafted a second key for Kurotsuchi. He’d decided upon it when he’d seen him, one morning, leaving offerings at the statue of Jizō Bosatsu. 

Standing by its altar in the cold, autumn rain, Kurotsuchi brushed the moss from a fallen pebble and stacked it atop the little pile that he’d gathered by Jizō’s side. To Kurotsuchi, there were never any gods watching over the world. There was no order, no grand plan, when the universe itself was chaos and entropy. 

He was not a man who believed in karma, and yet, he’d stood in the rain and stacked stone towers, as if to lighten his daughter’s penance at the Sai no Kawara. Leaving offerings to a deity in whom he had no faith was an odd habit that Kurotsuchi had taken to ages ago, even before Nemu’s death, but, as of late, Zaraki couldn’t help but wonder whether all the pomp and circumstance had started to mean something, after all. 

Perhaps they lived in a meaningless world where everything was insignificant, but Zaraki suspected that Kurotsuchi had found some kind of perfection, some divinity, in his life, regardless. Kurotsuchi never believed in much of anything, but Zaraki knew that he’d had faith in _her_. Whether he believed in the legends or not, perhaps the gesture alone and the thought Nemu, sneaking across the Sanzu River, tucked away in Jizō’s robe, still brought him some semblance of comfort. Even a faithless man needed something to believe in, and perhaps Kurotsuchi was lonely just as he was, now that he’d lost it. 

Or perhaps Zaraki was only overthinking things. 

He’d known that there had been a risk of that, but when he’d watched him, that day, standing in the rain, Zaraki had felt some kind of solidarity with him, regardless. Foolishly, Zaraki had felt close to him. Close enough that he had decided to gift to him his second key. 

It was an act of impulse, one sparked by desperation, propagated by loneliness, and permitted by unforgivable stupidity that Zaraki had regretted, ever since – not because Kurotsuchi took advantage of his hospitality, sneaking in at odd hours or stealing items from his home, but precisely because of the fact that he didn’t. Apart from their scheduled visits, once a night, Kurotsuchi never thought to visit him. Not even once. He never thought to stop by and say hello, or to join him for a meal, or to collaborate with work reports. Zaraki been able to live in denial, in the past, but that clear rejection of his offer of goodwill had forced him to face the fact that Kurotsuchi just didn’t want to be with him. There hadn’t been any connection between them, after all. Not even two lost daughters could bring them closer together. Somehow, that revelation had wounded him more dearly than if Kurotsuchi had betrayed his trust, completely, and he had woken up, one day, naked in his bathtub and neck deep in ice, with Kurotsuchi’s scalpel, slicing through his belly. 

Gods knew the apathy had cut him just as deeply.

When the lock turned, Zaraki dropped his plate into the sink, and he listened for the rusted squeak of the hinges. Spurred by the sound of the opening door, Zaraki turned off his sink and glanced out of his kitchen. He leaned out into the hallway, and their eyes met, his dull, tired green on Kurotsuchi’s blazing gold. 

Zaraki had been thinking, all night, of something poignant to say to him, something that would make their inevitable parting a little less painful, but the moment he saw those eyes, hardened and cold, the confidence bled out of him, as though from open wounds. He’d been waiting for hours, thinking of the right set of words that could possibly move him, but now, when they were finally together, Zaraki simply didn’t know what to say. 

He wasn’t used to intimate conversations, when men didn’t talk about their feelings. Men weren’t even supposed to _have_ feelings – not like that and certainly not for each other. He and Kurotsuchi were no exception to the norm, in that regard. What Zaraki felt towards him, the curiosity and the pain of betrayal, the desire and the longing, simply weren’t meant to be brought into the light. Those kinds of feelings weren’t acceptable: not for men like him, who were strong, and gruff, and confident. Not if he wanted to keep that reputation unscathed. When their relationship was nothing more than casual sex, and when Zaraki never bottomed, he could still convince himself that he hadn’t fallen too far, but uttering the truth, letting all of his softer feelings out into the open, would have made it so much worse. 

Knowing that, instead of speaking his mind, Zaraki bottled everything up, and sealed it shut, and let the words die heavy on his tongue like iron, bitter and putrid. And, paralyzed, he held that golden gaze, silent and unmoving, until Kurotsuchi tired of the charade and turned away from him. Without so much as an acknowledgment, Kurotsuchi kicked up the rug and knelt beside it, to pull makeup case from underneath the floorboards. 

Like a man possessed, Zaraki glanced down and watched his own feet slide against the wooden floor. He moved seemingly against his will, slowly inching closer. He wanted to reach out and trace his thumb along Kurotsuchi’s shoulder blade, he wanted to brush the snow from his haori, and yet, in the end, he stayed his hand. When he could not bring himself to move, Zaraki thought that he should say something. Anything. Whether to berate Kurotsuchi for his cruelty or to beg him for his kindness. 

He wanted to tell him that he looked ridiculous in that stupid costume, and that he still wanted him, dearly, in spite of it.

But when Kurotsuchi stood, when he brushed past him on his way to the bathroom, Zaraki couldn’t bring himself to stop him. His tongue turned to lead, and he couldn’t say a single word. Instead, he stared, helplessly watching him, as Kurotsuchi disappeared behind the door. It always took ages for Kurotsuchi to remove his makeup, and yet in all that time, Zaraki never budged from his place in the hallway. 

Even if a thousand years had passed, he would never stop waiting for him. 

Frozen in place, held by the paralyzing scent of myrrh and acetone, his vision blurred. Darkness crept into the corners of his vision, as he stared, unblinking, at the solid, dark wood of his locked bathroom door. He didn’t know how much time had passed, seconds or centuries, but when, Kurotsuchi emerged, he looked like another man, entirely. Though still clothed in his traditional captain’s regalia, with his jewelry discarded and his makeup, cleared away, Zaraki could barely recognize him. He made for a wondrous sight: exotically handsome, with his bright eyes and his blue hair, styled into an old-school, classic undercut that clashed against all his unrepentant eccentricities. 

Zaraki found it beautiful, all the same. 

Kurotsuchi was a bold lover, the one to initiate, more often than not, but that day, instead of tossing his hat onto the table and getting straight to the point, as he always did, Kurotsuchi placed his hat over his stomach, looked at him, and hesitated. Golden eyes narrowing in thinly veiled suspicion, slowly, he glanced back over his shoulder towards the bathroom door. 

For months, now, Kurotsuchi had been complaining about his soaps, about the stale scent of mint and artificial pine, but it was almost as though he’d never imagined that Zaraki would ever care of listen and do anything about it. Instead of those old, familiar scents, the dark, musky haze of cardamom and southernwood wafted sweetly from his doorway. It was something almost close to Kurotsuchi’s scent, though missing a few, smokier tones and the distinctive sting of his embalming fluid. Zaraki had spent hours in a fragrance shop that morning, sniffing at soaps and little scented bottles, trying to pinpoint all the scents that would please him. 

He wasn’t certain as to whether he wanted Kurotsuchi to have noticed the change or not.

“Something wrong?” Zaraki asked, tentatively breaking the silence. It was the first time that either of them had spoken before having sex in ages – perhaps it was the first time they’d done so since their very first night together, when they negotiated the terms of their conditional relationship. 

For a moment, Kurotsuchi didn’t respond, and he look back at him. His gaze, still transfixed on the doorway, never wavered. He was thinking about _something_ , clearly. When he tossed his hat onto the table, he missed, and it landed carelessly beside the cushions. 

“No,” he answered, shaking his head. “It’s nothing.”

“You sure?” Zaraki pressed, unsettled by the suspicion in Kurotsuchi’s tone and fearful of his hesitancy. “If something’s bothering you, you can tell me.”

“And why, dare I ask, would I ever deign to do something as foolish that?” he hissed. Kurotsuchi was every bit as fearsome as a beautiful man as he was every day, as a painted monster. “I can’t imagine placing my trust in a poorer confidant.” 

“You don’t think you can trust me?” he couldn’t help but scoff, incredulous. 

“Empirical evidence has strongly suggested that I can’t.”

“What ‘evidence?’” Zaraki prodded, closing the distance between them. 

So close to him, it was difficult to ignore their different in height – Kurotsuchi, glaring up at him as Zaraki casually glanced down. Perhaps it was petty, but he felt more confident, more secure, when he could remind himself of the physical difference between them. Not that Kurotsuchi was cowed in the slightest. He stood his ground, his expression, defiant. When he spoke, it was with a seamless, natural confidence, a borderline audacity, that even Zaraki could never muster. 

“Whenever classified information escapes from Gotei 13, the source of the leak is, more often than not, traced back to the loose lips and clumsy fingers of the Eleventh Division. Isn’t that the case? You and your men are notoriously careless, Zaraki; it’s quite the shameful reputation that you’ve built for yourself. If I were foolish enough to let you in on any secrets of mine, I have no doubt that they’d end up as a matter of public record within the week.” 

“I managed to keep _this_ a secret, haven’t I?” he asked, spreading his arms wide, gesturing to everything they were and all that they were doing. “Nobody knows about us –” 

“For now,” Kurotsuchi shrugged, cutting him off. “I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if one day, during a bout of vapid, drunken boasting or in another of your pointless attempts to shame me, you reveal every sordid detail of our physical encounters for all to hear. That would be one scarlet letter I could never erase. You’d turn me into the laughingstock of Seireitei.”

“ _You’d_ be the laughingstock?” Zaraki couldn’t help but snap back, sputtering. “I’m the one who’d never live this down. Anyone ever finds out I’m stickin’ it in you, I’ll have to spend the rest of my life with a bag over my head.”

“What a ridiculous notion. There’s nothing for you to be ashamed about. After all, you’ve dominated the legendary Captain of the Twelfth. That’s quite the notch on your bedpost. In comparison, if anyone ever discovers that I’ve been spreading my legs for a –” Kurotsuchi hesitated and shook his head, overcome with indignation – “a _glorified laboratory monkey_ , my reputation would never survive the dishonor.”

“That’s hilarious. You think anyone could ever be proud about fucking you?” Zaraki interjected, harsh, cruel laughter, marring his words in stabbing staccato. “You’re _disgusting_.”

“Clearly not ‘disgusting’ enough to deter the likes of you. In fact, the first time I removed my makeup for you, I believe that you said that I was beautiful.”

“Don’t fucking kid yourself,” Zaraki argued, shaking his head, incredulous. “You make me sick. I’ll admit that you ain’t bad to look at without the makeup, but we both know that ain’t the real you. The _real_ Kurotsuchi is the sissy little fuck that struts around in that stupid costume. You think it doesn’t disgust me to see you trussed up in all that crap, and remember that this entire time, I’ve been sticking my dick in _that_?” he sputtered, kicking at Kurotsuchi’s discarded hat. “You know, I always wondered why you offered to take it all off the first time we did this, when I was so drunk, I could barely even see straight. At first, I thought it was because you wanted to show off a little. You know – surprise me. But you know what I think, now? I think it’s because you knew that the real you is so fucking nasty that nobody, not even a ‘glorified lab monkey,’ would ever want anything to do with you unless you changed everything there is about yourself. Nobody wants to put up with you. _Nobody_. That’s why you had to go and make the only real friend you ever had, and why you had to work so damn hard to make sure she didn’t step out of line – because we all know if she knew any better, Nemu would’ve dumped you in a heartbeat, just like everybody else. Just like _I_ will the second I find somebody better than you, which won’t take long once I actually start looking.”

With that last word, an awkward, bitter silence descended upon them both. No sound echoed through the room save for Zaraki harsh breaths against the stifling stillness. 

For a moment, time stood still. Zaraki’s vision tunneled; he could feel the force of his pulse jutting up, threatening to burst through the barrier of his tightened throat. He knew that he had crossed a line. He and Kurotsuchi argued often, but never like that and never so personally. It was only after everything was said and done that Zaraki realized that he had betrayed Kurotsuchi’s trust in him – and there _was_ an implicit trust between the two of them, whether they’d openly discussed it or not. 

Oddly enough, however, though Zaraki had clearly hit below the belt, Kurotsuchi never revealed a single sign of distress. The entire time, as Zaraki berated him, he’d only ever stared back, still and perfectly expressionless. It unsettled him, in a way: Kurotsuchi’s steady, even silence. In a way, Zaraki would have preferred an earthquake and a horror show. At the very least, if Kurotsuchi had broken down and cried, or if he’d gotten angry, and cursed at him, and stormed out the door, Zaraki could have formed some semblance of a plan for what to do, going forward. He was somewhat used to that. In the past, he’d endured Yachiru’s anger, and he’d held her through her trembling tears. She’d been an ordinary girl with perfectly ordinary feelings – feelings that Zaraki had hurt, at times – but they’d worked through them, together, and emerged from the rain and the thunder even closer, at the end of it all. 

But there would be no weathering the storm with Kurotsuchi. 

Not when he didn’t know what he was thinking and what, in the name of the gods, he could ever do to pay him recompense. With fear rising in the pit of his stomach, Zaraki realized, then, just how precious, how fragile, their bond truly was – and how desperately he didn’t want to lose it. He was just about to apologize when Kurotsuchi broke the silence. 

“Was that meant to serve as some kind of a revelation?” he asked, deadpan. “It’s nothing new, Zaraki. I understood, from the very start, that this was a temporary arrangement. If you find someone else, I certainly don’t intend protest. The sex isn’t nearly good enough for me to mourn its absence.”

Startled by the callousness of Kurotsuchi’s tone, Zaraki felt his heart sink deep within the pit of his chest. The man’s indifference to it all, his apathy, twisted more deeply than even the most explosive anger. Zaraki was certain, then, that he would have much preferred tears. At the very least, visible evidence that he had injured him would have given Zaraki an excuse to backpedal and apologize. He would have been able to comfort him shamelessly, in that case, but Kurotsuchi never made anything easy for him, turning even a simple apology into a trying ordeal. 

“Look, I didn’t mean –”

“Taking that into account,” Kurotsuchi continued, cutting him off, “it is far more likely that I will be the one to call off our arrangement when the time comes. Fruitless, unsatisfying experiments such as this never hold my attention for long. In fact, I’m losing interest, already. You should begin your search for this new partner of yours sooner rather than later, Zaraki.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Zaraki growled, stalking closer. “ _Never_ again. You ain’t going anywhere. You hear me?”

He knew that he didn’t have the right to sound so incensed when he was the one who’d threatened to leave Kurotsuchi first, but the thought of seeing him walk out on him, the thought of having been the cause of his own abandonment, spurred Zaraki on, fueling his outrage. With every step he took towards him, Kurotsuchi inched away, farther and farther, until his back was pressed against the wall of Zaraki’s living room. Even while retreating, that man looked so damned _proud_. Staring up at him with that expressionless frown, those crossed arms and that straightened back. 

Zaraki wasn’t certain whether he wanted to cradle his face or break it. 

“What’s the matter?” Kurotsuchi prompted, suddenly, tilting his head in mock curiosity, even when his eyes were dull with barely constrained annoyance. “Losing your momentum? Not so eager to separate when we’ll be parting on my terms, now are you? How tactlessly hypocritical. Perhaps I should cut my losses and leave now, while I still have time to salvage the rest of this ruined evening.”

Kurotsuchi’s malice cut him like a viper’s bite. Spreading like venom, it chilled him from his trembling skin, hair raised, all the way down to the marrow of his bones. It tore the breath from his lungs and clotted the flow of blood within his veins. 

“Don’t –” Zaraki didn’t mean to sound as forceful, as impatient with him, as he did. That was just the desperation talking. “Just forget everything I said. Alright? Just drop it. Just _stay_.”

“Why should I? If disgust you, I may as well go and relieve you of my presence.”

Turning away from him, Kurotsuchi tried to push past the barrier of his Zaraki’s shoulder, but in response, wounded and angry – or perhaps just fearful – Zaraki struck his fist against the wall, slamming against the wood mere inches from Kurotsuchi’s skull. The sound reverberated through his stark and empty home. Splinters dug into his bleeding knuckles from the force of it all, and yet Kurotsuchi didn’t even flinch. He simply stared back at him, discerning and wise, as Zaraki physically caged him in.

“I told you, you ain’t going anywhere.”

“There it is,” Kurotsuchi taunted, his eyes, half-lidded. “The laboratory monkey, slamming its fists against the walls of its cage. So much for proving me wrong. You always show your true colors, eventually. Untamed and violent, just like the beast I’d always known you to be.”

“A beast, huh? Well, what’s that make you?” he whispered through clenched teeth. Leaning in close, he could feel the heat of Kurotsuchi’s breath on his lips, burning holes through his skin. “Since you’re the one who keeps coming here to bend over for one.”

“Why, it makes me a twisted deviant and an outcast. A veritable social pariah,” he answered. “But that’s nothing new. I’ve always been fond of the unorthodox; I don’t have any qualms about lying with a beast, so long as he keeps my priorities in mind. You do remember those, don’t you? When you’re obedient, you tend to them so well.”

An arrogant, snide smile twisted across Kurotsuchi’s face, even as his voice softened, low and crooning. That warm, coquettish tone was better suited to dancers and harlots than the infamous Captain of the Twelfth. In any other situation, that tone, in Kurotsuchi’s cruel voice, would have been laughable, but in the privacy of Zaraki’s home, when Kurotsuchi looked the way he did, with his handsome smile and his eyes, half-lidded, when the scent of chemical cyprinum wafted through the air, warm and heady, it was enough to make Zaraki lose himself.

Muscles stiffening, he sucked in a harsh, stuttering breath through clenched teeth, as Kurotsuchi dug his fingers into the folds of his hakama, his thumb, dragging a long, sharp line down his shaft. His was an iron grip, cruel and unyielding. 

“What’s the matter? Not in the mood?” he teased, digging his nail against the head, still soft. It served as a promise and a silent threat. Zaraki didn’t know what Kurotsuchi used to coat his nails, but it stung like a bitch when it broke the skin. “Or did you simply forget to take your medicine?”

Kurotsuchi’s perfect, painted glass cracked and shattered, and that sultry, fake persona came apart at the seams. His playful teasing devolved into shrill, mocking laughter, sharp staccato, that struck Zaraki like a thousand arrows. There it was. The insufferable taunting. The same old routine. 

“Men like you, all chest-pounding, superficial machismo, are nothing but talk. The sad reality is that you can’t perform without a little extra push, can you?” he taunted, all gold teeth beneath a Glasgow smile. “Or were you foolishly hoping that I’d never peek inside of your medicine cabinet?” 

Zaraki felt the twinge of embarrassment run down his spine. He shook his head, trying to brush it off. Though Zaraki wanted to rebel, to pull away and demand that things be different, that _they_ should be different, enraptured by the spell, the swirling mist of myrrh and disinfectant and the firm grip of Kurotsuchi’s hand on his cock, Zaraki began falling down that same, slippery slope, stepping right into the trap.

“The hell’re you talking about?”

“I’m a doctor, Zaraki. You can tear up the paperwork and peel the labels from your prescription bottles, but I recognize sildenafil when I see it. Fifty milligrams. Right? A man like you, relying on something like that… well, we wouldn’t want that embarrassing news to spread, now would we?”

“There ain’t nothing embarrassing about it. Any man’d need a double dose to get it up for a freak like you,” Zaraki grimaced, struggling in his grasp, but Kurotsuchi only tightened his hold on him. 

“You make me sound so unappealing. Don’t forget that you are positively surrounded by the dull and the orthodox. With your status, you could have any woman in Rukongai, and yet, every single night, it’s _me_ that you invite into your bed. Don’t delude yourself, Zaraki. You can claim that I disgust you, all you’d like, but I am precisely your type of man. The best you’ve ever had… right? You were always impotent, but at this point, after having a taste of what I have to offer, I doubt that you could ever get it up for anyone else. Triple dose or otherwise.”

The spark caught and burst into flame. Spiraling out of control, losing himself to anger and outraged disbelief, the sickening shame, Zaraki felt his body lurch forward. Before he knew it, he’d slammed his shoulder against Kurotsuchi’s chest and shoved him, _hard_ , against the wall. The crack of Kurotsuchi’s skull against hard, wallpapered wood echoed through the room like an atom bomb. The violence and the building temper: it wasn’t any different than any other night, but at that particular moment, Zaraki couldn’t take his eyes off of that bloody smear, marring the wall of his living room. With a quiet gasp, Kurotsuchi staggered, just barely catching himself on the side table. 

Painted nails dug deep into the wood, leaving pale, splintered crescents on its surface that would forever serve as evidence of the crimes that Zaraki committed, even long after he’d scrubbed away Kurotsuchi’s blood. Horrified, Zaraki distanced himself, backing away until he felt the press of the opposite wall against his spine. Every step, in slow motion, felt like wading through a lake of concrete. The thick slop, sinking into his boots and holding him down like molten lead. 

Horrified, Zaraki wanted to let himself sink into the swamp. 

When Kurotsuchi ran his fingers through his hair, they emerged, glistening dark, and wet, and crimson. A silent, shuddering sigh struck through him like an earthquake, wracking havoc through his bony frame. With every breath, his ribs trembled, almost as though they could shatter and crumble to dust at any moment. He looked so fragile; he always did when the makeup came off. But when Kurotsuchi looked up at him through a curtain of messy bangs, mussed and bloodied, those golden eyes blazed bright with rage and war. 

Kurotsuchi sucked in a stuttering breath and dug his fingers through the tangled strands. 

“Do you think that I’m going to endure that in silence? That I would ever allow that kind of mistreatment from a rabid boar like _you_?”

Mouth welded shut, Zaraki stared back at him, speechless and impotent, just as Kurotsuchi had claimed. He’d wanted to say something, anything, to placate him. He was sick and tired of fighting him. He wanted to extend an olive branch and bring about their armistice. But by the time he gained the courage to speak, to offer the clumsy apology that he’d been struggling to form since the very beginning, Zaraki couldn’t stop the sparks. They caught on his curtains and burst into flame. Towers of smoke billowed up to the ceiling, clouding the room in darkness. Smothering his lungs. 

He looked up, and Kurotsuchi was charging at him, eyes on fire. 

Bright spots danced at the corners of Zaraki’s blurring vision. Flames crawling up his door, his heartbeat thundered, pounding against his ribcage with enough force to shake the windows as his burning curtains fell apart. Spellbound, he stared, transfixed and paralyzed, as the house burned down around them both.

Kurotsuchi came at him like a wildfire. Fully drawn and polished, Ashisogi Jizō’s sharpened blade glinted dangerously in the winter moonlight. Rushing at him, it came so close that Zaraki saw the whites of his eyes reflected in the metal. 

When his racing thoughts slowed just enough to catch up with his frozen body, Zaraki burst back into motion, sidestepping just in time to watched, wide-eyed, as the blade ground sharp against his wall, sending shards of wood flying through the air. It was a poor cut, shallow and jagged, but it would have killed him, all the same, had it bitten into his flesh. Mere inches away from the blade, Zaraki dodged every rushed and frantic strike, not with skill, but with practiced familiarity. He could have fought Kurotsuchi blind. Night after night, they stepped to the rhythm of the same song and dance: the same, familiar tune and every, tired cadence. He knew the patterns and the turns by heart. 

Kurotsuchi never used his Shikai. He had grenades on his belt, but he’d never pull the pins. His satisfaction hinged on his helplessness, after all; he didn’t want to win. 

Zaraki didn’t even need his Zanpakutō to subdue him. 

Always the model of an S.R.D.I. scientist, fighting for research Kurotsuchi drew out his battles, prolonging the pain – but when it was just the two of them, alone, in that house, with nothing but hormones, and sex, and each other, Kurotsuchi was just an impatient, stupid man like any other, chasing after a fleeting high. Going for the predictable, killing blow, Kurotsuchi lashed at his neck, aiming to sever his jugular. He knew him so well, Zaraki saw that move a mile away. By reflex, he grabbed hard onto Kurotsuchi arm and tugged, using his momentum to dislocate his shoulder and send Ashisogi Jizō clattering to the floor. 

Of all the legends of Gotei 13, Kurotsuchi’s limitless pain tolerance was one of the most infamous. He’d lost a leg in combat, in the past. He’d lost an arm, an eye, almost half of his body, all agonizing wounds, with no display of distress more audible than a series of shouted curses, more righteously infuriated, than truly pained. Almost as though he couldn’t feel it. Almost as though he didn’t know what it meant. Even Zaraki, too, had fallen for the charade in the past, thinking at one time, that Kurotsuchi knew neither fear nor pain. 

But that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Kurotsuchi understood it just as well as anyone else – he was just a little better at hiding it than most. 

But when they fought, he bared it all. Only when they were alone, together, could Kurotsuchi stand to be candid.

Kurotsuchi’s twisted wails echoed through the room like nails against glass. His dislocated arm, held tight in Zaraki’s bruising grip, twitched madly like a serpent’s tail. Before Kurotsuchi could recover and reach for the needles that Zaraki knew, from experience, were bound to come next, he forced him down and slammed his knee against his solar plexus.

It knocked the wind out him. Like a little ragdoll, button eyes and woven flax, Kurotsuchi collapsed into his arms, his eyes, closed, and his cheek, pressed up against his chest. Swallowing hard around the lump in his throat, Zaraki turned away from the sight and snapped his canines down against his inner cheek. Determined to punish himself, he pushed, biting harder until the sharp astringency of iron seeped hot between his teeth. The pain shot through him like an arrow, stunning him like a flashbang and keeping his body eerily still against the overwhelming urge to give in to the unacceptable desire to pull Kurotsuchi closer. To hold him gently as he buried his cheek in his azure hair. 

Smothering down the blooming warmth in his chest, Zaraki numbed himself from his desires and pulled his partner’s pliant body into the bedroom. Though he would have much preferred to tend to him in other ways, to lay him on the bed and undress him gently, Zaraki knew that tenderness wasn’t what Kurotsuchi wanted from him. So, instead, no matter how it pained him to do so, Zaraki threw him, face down, over his desk and kicked his legs apart. 

Unread, overdue piles of paperwork crashed to the floor, the pages, peeling away from their folders like snowfall. From behind the flowing shadows and the dull glow of the table lamp, Zaraki saw the glint of golden eyes, glaring back at him, hard and furious. As though fueled by pure, unbridled spite, in a fit of rage, Kurotsuchi snarled, swiping out his one good arm and knocking Yachiru’s lamp to the ground. It tumbled down, fragile porcelain, shattering against the wooden floor and ripping into her floral, printed lampshade. Sparks flew angrily from the broken bulb. Tiny shards of glass cascaded through the air and rained down inside his mind’s eye.

Every single time, Kurotsuchi just had to make a mess of something, if only to make him angry enough to justify everything he’d do to him. If only the bastard hadn’t fought, perhaps Zaraki could have been gentle. Instead, staring down at the fragments of Yachiru’s broken lamp, Zaraki felt his fingers twitch and felt an unrelenting pressure building up inside his chest. 

He dug his fingers through his hair and slammed his bleeding skill against the desk, and still, Kurotsuchi thought to fight him. Twisting like a madman, he kicked back and clawed at the wood, scrabbling for purchase, as Zaraki struggled to hold him down. When that bastard fucking _spit_ at him, Zaraki drew back and slammed his fist against his jaw with a sickening crack. 

He watched as Kurotsuchi’s fingers tensed from the shock – and then he watched them go slack as he collapsed, soft and limp, against the desk. Working quickly, Zaraki started peeling off his clothing, piece by piece. He threw his haori and hakama to the wayside. He peeled off his robe, and as one, last act to humiliate him, when he reached for Kurotsuchi’s boxers, Zaraki made a pointed effort to break the seams and tear it to pieces, leaving him bare on his journey back to the Twelfth. Staring at his pile of clothing on the floor, Zaraki had the strangest urge to carry it out back and throw it all in the dumpster. 

When Zaraki finally took a moment to breathe, however, after placing his hands on the desk, he noticed a stain on his knuckles, from where his fist had collided with Kurotsuchi’s jaw. With his other, trembling hand, he brushed his thumb against the pool and watched it come away, crimson, when he held it to the moonlight. The color, bright and bold, broke through even his unrelenting rage. With a sense of sickening fear encroaching him, Zaraki wove his fingers through Kurotsuchi’s bloody hair and slowly turned his face. 

Kurotsuchi slowly blinked back at him, still dazed. He’d busted his lip again, the wound, deeper, this time, seeping blood down his cheek and pooling it onto the table. Loosening his grip on his hair, Zaraki felt his heart stop. Seeing him so weak, so broken and helpless, bled the anger right out of him. He leaned in closer, then, ready to ask him if he wanted to stop, or if he’d went and gone too far… but then Zaraki heard it. 

It started as a whimper, coming from below him: a weak and primal sound, soft and pleading. It gutted him like a butcher knife until the very moment that it warped into quiet, imperceptible laughter. With every passing moment, it grew bolder, louder, until it sang, audacious and cruel, over the pounding hum of his bedroom radiator. Smiling up at him, Kurotsuchi choked on his own blood. He blinked back tears through long, wet eyelashes, and grinned at him through red-gold teeth – and that sorry bastard had to _laugh_.

Kurotsuchi was laughing at _him_.

“Shit. I suppose that I’ve lost... haven’t I?”

Kurotsuchi only ever cussed when they were alone, together. He couldn’t risk that kind of crass impropriety in public when he had an educated image to maintain. He only ever came undone for him, debasing himself, showcasing the true extent of his depravity behind closed doors. The filth, the debauchery, was so beautiful it made Zaraki’s heart ache. 

“Your swordplay was always trash,” Zaraki taunted. For once, however, his voice was not entirely unkind, even while playing the role of the aggressor, as Kurotsuchi had always wanted. Zaraki doubted, however, that the man beneath him would have picked up on the subtleties. “Don’t think I’ve ever seen you win a fair fight.” 

“True enough,” he agreed, only ever so amenable when they were in the bedroom. Despite his momentary surrender, a snide, playful smile spread across Kurotsuchi’s face, so twisted and bloodied, it charmed him like a spell. “For a captain in an organization of swordsmen, I make for a rather poor warrior.”

“That’s one way to put it. You ask me, letting you in Gotei 13 was the worst mistake Yamamoto ever made. Should’ve left you to rot in the Nest of Maggots. Hell, maybe we all would’ve been happier,” he said, unable to resist smiling down at him. “We could’ve had a decent man leading the Twelfth, and you… well, you were the prison bitch, back in that cave, yeah? Bet that was right up your alley. Probably had a line of guys out the door, keeping you entertained all night. Or maybe you were the one doing the entertaining.”

“Maybe I was,” Kurotsuchi laughed, weakly, with a half-hearted, one-shouldered shrug. “Assuming that were true, however, what would it mean in your case, Zaraki?” 

“What do you mean?”

“Such poor tastes you have, settling for even a prisoner’s sloppy seconds…” Kurotsuchi stirred, lifting his hips to brush against his groin. Unrepentantly eager, even while playing the role of the victim. “Though I’m hardly surprised. Strip away your rank and title, and you’re no better than the rest of them, at the end of it all. Forcing yourself on a wounded opponent – I wouldn’t expect anything less from a savage like you, just barely chained. You’ve never had any sense of honor.” 

_You’re right. I don’t._

That was what Kurotsuchi always wanted him to say, or something close to that extent, before Zaraki just barely lubed up and forced himself in. 

Though he was the one who topped, Zaraki didn’t have any misconceptions about who really called the shots in their sham of a relationship. Just like in all other aspects of his life, for Kurotsuchi, it was his way or the highway. Zaraki never questioned his orders; he was content to be a good little puppet, if it kept Kurotsuchi coming back to his doorstep, searching for more. For once, however, with the memory of stone towers and Jizō Bosatsu haunting his vision, Zaraki wondered if they couldn’t be different. 

He reached for the lube, suspiciously kept in his desk drawer instead of his nightstand, and popped open the little tube. Right on cue, Kurotsuchi raised his hips, shamelessly eager for the burn of his cock, dragging up his too-tight passage and spearing him open.

Instead of following orders, however, that time, instead of going for the kill, Zaraki slicked up his fingers and leaned in close, whispering against when little remained of Kurotsuchi’s ear. Where, during any other night, his hand would have clenched around his throat, it went to nestle, instead, against the small of his back, stroking softly against his spine. Slick fingers moved down to trace his hips, dipping down between his cheeks and pressing taut against his ass. 

Kurotsuchi wasn’t one for foreplay. He’d had a dozen excuses – it was too boring, too slow, too dull, and too orthodox – but the real problem, Zaraki suspected, was that it was entirely too _personal_. Too reminiscent of marital beds and post-coital pillow talk, when Kurotsuchi was more accustomed to keeping his distance. 

On any other night, Kurotsuchi would have taken his cock nearly dry, and he wouldn’t complain. He’d never even think to truly stop him. But when Zaraki rounded his hole and slipped in a single, calloused finger, Kurotuschi froze, stiff and horrified, as though he’d impaled him on his Zanpakutō.

“Maybe you’re right, and I don’t got any honor,” Zaraki whispered, “but I’d never force you to do anything. I don’t even want to hurt you the way I do now. …I want you to quit fighting me, Kurotsuchi,” he admitted, pleading. “For fuck’s sake, I want you to _want me_.”

He could feel Kurotsuchi clench down around his finger, trying in vain to force him out. The man pushed up onto his toes and tried to squirm away, but when Zaraki tightened reached for his neck, he stilled. It only lasted a second before Kurotsuchi swatted his arm away with an indignant fury that left him reeling. Betraying his true strength, unaffected by his wounds, Kurotsuchi propped himself up on his one, good arm and glared daggers at him over his shoulder. There was disbelief in his expression, as though he couldn’t fathom that Zaraki would dare to _prepare_ him, of all things, as his sharp, golden gaze shifted from the hand cradling his ass, all the way up to Zaraki’s single eye. 

Zaraki could tolerate his anger, but what he couldn’t stand, at that moment, was the _disgust_ , powerful and withering; it drained the confidence from his bones. 

“What are you doing?” Kurotsuchi growled, low and sinister.

Gathering his courage, Zaraki knew he had to stand firm. In response, Zaraki twisted his wrist, grinding his knuckles against the tightened rim of Kurotsuchi’s asshole. When he had the audacity to squirm away, Zaraki held him down and slipped in a second finger. He worked him open for a moment, before curling his fingers up against his prostate as both incentive and a silent reprimand. 

“That’s a little better, ain’t it?” he asked, his voice, soft and kind – unbecoming for a man of his violent disposition. “You don’t really want to bleed, do you? _I_ don’t want to make you bleed.” Reaching up towards Kurotsuchi’s face, overstepping his bounds, Zaraki ran his thumb against his jaw – “Come on, Kurotsuchi. Just tell me you want me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he scolded, slapping his hand away. Somehow, even with his ass in the air, as he was pinned on a desk and finger-fucked, Kurotsuchi still carried himself with a commanding presence, absolute in its authority. “And don’t break character, you idiot. You’re ruining the mood.”

“Just _say it_ –” Zaraki’s voice, a desperate plea, boomed throughout the empty house, and he held his breath, fearing Kurotsuchi’s response. After all, Zaraki wanted him, too. He wanted him _desperately_ , and he just didn’t have the courage to say it. If only Kurotsuchi could admit it, first, Zaraki knew that he would have gained the confidence to follow suit. He wanted to follow his example. To summon just a fraction of Kurotsuchi’s audacity. “Please… Say it _once_ , tell me you want me, that you’ll never do this for anyone else, and I’ll never ask you again.”

As though caught off guard, Kurotsuchi went still, cold and unmoving beneath him, save for the barely perceptible tilt of his head, allowing him a closer glance at Zaraki’s uncovered eye. And for just a moment, Zaraki could have sworn that his gaze had softened – as though he understood that perhaps their relationship, established on nothing more than passion and mutual hatred, could have benefitted from just a little intimacy.

Kurotsuchi looked at him, curious and probing… and then he turned away.

Slowly, Zaraki removed his fingers, fearing that he’d injured him. 

“…Kurotsuchi?” 

“Go to hell,” he muttered, staring at the wall as he collapsed back onto the table. “And _never_ presume to tell me what I want. I won’t warn you again. Now, get on with it before I change my mind. You’re lucky that I haven’t thrown you off my back and stormed out of the door, already.”

Disappointment, viscous bitterness, settled low and heavy within Zaraki’s gut, though what quickly overpowered it, more than the sadness and the unwarranted, senseless feeling of betrayal, was the quickly rising anger at Kurotsuchi’s stubbornness. He tightened his grip around Kurotsuchi’s neck and prayed, in his own guilt-stricken, sickening way, that the bones would snap beneath his grip.

“So, this is how you want to play.”

“That’s what I said from the beginning, isn’t it? I don’t know what ever gave you any doubt.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, his voice, a quiet whisper. “I just thought –”

“That is precisely the problem,” Kurosuchi hissed, dripping venom. “You made the egregious mistake of thinking for yourself, when simpleminded beasts like you are better off staying quiet and following orders.”

With his good deed, unappreciated, Zaraki bristled. He took a deep breath just to steady himself, fighting back against his anger.

“Why the hell are you always so _fucking_ full of it?”

Kurotsuchi glared back at him, then, with such righteous fury, almost as though he couldn’t believe that Zaraki was taking that kind of insolent tone with him, even when he was the one who’d started their argument in the first place. Always picking a fight over absolutely nothing, it was almost as though Kurotsuchi had a natural urge to turn everything into a horrible ordeal. That man just couldn’t resist the need to be difficult.

“That’s it. Get off of me,” Kurotsuchi commanded, suddenly, elbowing him in the ribs. Zaraki never released his neck, but, against the pressure, Kurotsuchi tried to push himself up, balancing on his toes and his one, good arm. Instead of letting him go, like he knew he should have, almost reflexively, Zaraki, shoved him back down, pinning him to the desk with a crushing grip that popped the joints in Kurotsuchi’s back.

“…You don’t get to do this to me,” he said, low and dark. “You don’t get to screw me over and walk away after all of this!”

At that moment, Zaraki could barely recognize the sound of his own voice. He knew it from the pit of his soul: good men didn’t say things like that. He’d said it before, of course, but that was the first time that Zaraki had meant it. It was wrong, and cruel, and horrible. He was just about to apologize and release his hold on his neck when the tension bled away from Kurotsuchi’s body. He looked back at him suddenly, under a veil of soft blue hair – and he _smiled_ at him, endlessly pleased.

“Very good. Now, that wasn’t so difficult, was it?” he crooned, spreading his legs. His hole glistened with lube, better prepared than any other day, but Zaraki knew that it wouldn’t be enough to ease the pain. But he supposed, in a way, that pain was the entire point. Kurotsuchi turned away from him, then, pillowing his cheek against his arm. “Now, hurry up,” he commanded, “or I’ll make good on my threats, next time.”

After that debacle, Zaraki wasn’t even hard – and he’d taken a double dose of that sildenafil, just to ensure that he wouldn’t suffer the intolerable embarrassment of leaving Kurotsuchi unsatisfied. He wasn’t aroused as much as he was angry. That casual threat and Kurotsuchi’s infuriating smile set his blood pumping, pounding through his ears like war drums. 

He didn’t want to fuck him quite as much as he wanted to punish him. That was the point of their meetings from the very start. Their relationship, at its essence, was pain and punishment, anger and catharsis. 

As Zaraki reached for the lube and slipped his cock from his loosened haori, he pushed aside all thoughts of a better, happier future – of Kurotsuchi, sprawled out on his bed instead of his desk, of fucking him slowly, taking care of him – and focused on the rage building up in his gullet. Cold lube dripped haphazardly from his fingers, splattering onto the floor beside Kurotsuchi’s bare feet, as he slowly stroked himself to full hardness. 

Zaraki glanced down at Kurosuchi’s glistening hole and resisted the urge to spit. 

“Fine. Have it your way,” he hissed, and twisted his fingers into Kurotsuchi’s hair. Neither of them were blushing virgins, but when the soft tip of Zaraki’s cock pressed up against Kurotsuchi stretched rim, he stiffened, his hole clenching visibly against the threat of his full length, pushing in. He buried his face in the crook of his arm and squeezed his eyes shut, as though he couldn’t stand the anticipation. It was strange, watching him shirk away like a little boy, afraid of the doctor’s needle. 

It tugged at Zaraki’s heartstrings just as much as it disgusted him. 

Steeling himself, he pinned his arm against Kurotsuchi’s back and forced himself in, his cock, dragging up his ass. Every inch was pure agony – hot, and tight, and searing – like sinking his fingers into open wounds and prying him apart. The burn on his cock was so intense, it felt impossible to push in any further – and he knew it must have felt impossible to take. Even so, instead of struggling and squirming away, like any reasonable man would have done in his position, Kurotsuchi spread his legs wider and tried to ease the strain. 

There was no more arguing, then. No more insults, no more bitching, no more attitude. Kurotsuchi snapped his golden teeth into his arm to muffle the evidence of his pain, but when Zaraki braced himself and slammed in to the root, pushing past the resistance, Kurotsuchi couldn’t silence his pathetic whimpers, weak and trembling. He shuddered, his asshole, twitching desperately in a vain attempt to push his cock out and make room for the intrusion, all the same. 

At that moment, Zaraki couldn’t help but think to himself that if fucking his ass was all that it ever took to shut him up, then he should have speared Kurotsuchi on his cock and fucked the attitude out of him hours ago. 

Though he was only just was fully sheathed, Zaraki allowed himself little time for respite. He knew, after all, that Kurotsuchi wouldn’t be stunned by the pain and the fullness forever. He’d start fighting back, sooner or later, and if Zaraki didn’t want to end up with poisoned scratches on his face and spit in his eye, he’d better subdue him quickly. Fighting against the burn, Zaraki pulled out halfway and slammed back inside, setting a brutal, relentless pace. With every blind jerk of his hips, slapping hard against Kurotsuchi’s ass, he shoved the desk forward, the dull wood, banging against the wall and deepening age-old, familiar dents. 

Zaraki braced his hands on the desk, and fought through the pain and burning friction until that unrelenting tightness subsided to a soft and gentle pressure around his cock. Though he’d been reluctant to fuck him, unprepared, at the start, by then, Zaraki was already settling into a familiar pace. Fucking into that warm, silky passage, Zaraki lost himself in the haze of his pleasure, his furious growls, dying down to gasping sighs, exhausted and breathless. 

It was then, however, glancing down, that Zaraki realized that it was Kurotsuchi’s blood, easing the way. It coated his cock, painting it red as he stabbed blindly into him. At that point, however, it didn’t matter. He groaned, low and wanting, he hunched down, fucking into him in sharp, brutal thrusts that had him jerking up against the desk.

As though sensing the change in atmosphere, Kurotsuchi released his bite on his arm and glanced back at him, incensed. When Zaraki had the audacity to grab his ass, spreading his cheeks to deepen the angle of his thrusts, it was almost as though something finally snapped in him, and Kurotsuchi realized that Zaraki was _using him_ , and enjoying every moment just as much, or perhaps even more, than he was. 

Obviously, Kurotsuchi couldn’t have that. 

Nobody was ever permitted to use his body for anything – even if he was using Zaraki, in turn. Incensed by the burning fullness of Zaraki’s cock, dragging up into his ass, spurred on by the degradation of Zaraki, fucking into him like a sex doll, Kurotsuchi reignited his struggle in earnest. Trying in vain to escape Zaraki’s iron grip around his waist, Kurotsuchi snarled, clawing at the desk until his fingernails shattered. When that fucking middle nail, nearly three inches long, snapped in two from the pressure, Kurotsuchi lost it. He slammed his fist against the wood and cursed at him in outrage, blaming Zaraki for everything that was wrong in his life. Cursing him, and his existence, and everything he ever was. 

Having finally endured enough of the abuse, Zaraki balanced one hand on the desk and clamped the other, tight, over Kurotsuchi’s mouth, digging his nails into his jaw, just to shut him up. After Zaraki had silenced him, he redirected his focus and doubled down, pounding relentlessly against Kurotsuchi’s prostate. By that time, Kurotsuchi was practically frothing at the mouth in outrage, screaming at him beneath the muzzle of his calloused palm. Though his toenails barely scraped the floor, he scrabbled, desperate, for any kind of purchase to buck Zaraki’s heavy weight off of his back. He struggled against the indignity of it all, writhing in his grasp, until Zaraki was certain he’d tear his tendons. 

Suddenly, however, then there was a calm in the storm, and Kurotsuchi stilled, passively arching his back as Zaraki pounded into his ass. For a moment, Zaraki wondered whether he’d finally fucked the fight right out of him – but then he saw it from the corner of his eye. Kurotsuchi’s trembling fingers inched ever closer to the edge of his desk, where his little cup of pens had overturned in their struggle. 

For all his experience in “taming” the man, even Zaraki didn’t see it coming. The second Kurotsuchi took hold of that pen, he spun it into a reverse grip and sent the tip crashing down against the back of his open hand. With only a split-second moment to react, Zaraki just barely dodged the blow. Instead of piercing straight through the bones, the pen only grazed him, biting, hard, into the side of his palm and giving him a little taste of his own bitter medicine.

It was only ink and broken plastic, but when that pen slammed into the wood, shattering against the desk, it cut as sharp as razorblades against his thumb. Pulling out of the man below him, Zaraki staggered back, fresh blood, spraying through the air and dripping down his wrist, as he released his hold on Kurotsuchi, entirely.

Reeling from the shock, Zaraki glanced down at the damage and put pressure on the wound, though when he looked up, he knew that his pain was nothing compared to Kurotsuchi’s. With hot trails of blood, dripping down his trembling thighs, Kurotsuchi could barely stand on his own two feet. He was in no position to fight, but it was almost as though he couldn’t resist sparking one last conflict. In violent protest for his mistreatment, Kurotsuchi turned and spat on the floor, staining Yachiru’s lampshade with his blood. And Zaraki saw red.

“You… stupid _bitch_!” 

He stalked towards him and knew that Kurotsuchi couldn’t ward him off any longer. He couldn’t even flee. Even after he’d reset his shoulder, slamming it hard against the wall, Kurotsuchi looked almost sick from the pain, staggering weakly until his knees gave out, and he draped his body weakly over the back of Zaraki’s desk chair. 

By the time Zaraki cornered him, throwing him against the wall and pinning up him by his throat, all Kurotsuchi could do, by that point, was claw weakly at his wrists. His smooth, painted hands were so much smaller than his own. Though Zaraki knew that the violence wasn’t personal, just thinking about that pen, the blood, and that gods-damned _lamp_ set him off into a rage. Before he could even think twice, he’d coiled back his fist and slammed it, hard, against Kurotsuchi’s stomach. 

Stunned by the pain, Kurotsuchi crumpled to the floor. Coughing blood, he struggled to prop himself up on his elbow, before even that meager strength failed him, and he collapsed. With his entrance slick with blood and precum, it was easier for Zaraki to coerce him into a second round. Tugging his hips up, he pinned him to the floor with one hand between his shoulder blades and the other tangled in his hair, grinding his cheek against the wooden floor. Zaraki gave no warning before he slammed his cock back inside of him with one hard thrust, filling him up and spearing him open. As Zaraki pounded into him, Kurotsuchi’s broken wails, his last resistance, sounded like those a man on his death throes.

Sooner or later, however, as pleasure and exhaustion overwhelmed the pain, even Kurotsuchi’s outraged howling died down into pitiful, pathetic little whimpers, and then to nearly silent, labored breaths, drowned out only by the squelch of Zaraki’s thick cock rutting deep inside of him. Giving up the fight entirely, Kurotsuchi let his body go limp, and he closed his eyes, submitting fully. Losing all sense of dignity, he spread his thighs wider and propped up his hips as he let Zaraki mount him. 

In the past, Zaraki had reveled in those victories, in the sweet satisfaction of Kurotsuchi’s inevitable surrender, but now, he didn’t know what to make of it. 

He’d always hated him, that snake – but he looked so soft in his vulnerability. He always had, but it felt, to Zaraki, as though that particular night was, perhaps, the very first time that he’d ever truly stopped to truly look at him. Though he knew it wasn’t permitted, he was overcome, suddenly, by the strangest urge to hold him close, even when he knew that Kurotsuchi wasn’t a man who appreciated aftercare. 

Even when he knew that men weren’t meant to care for one another. 

Zaraki cursed that fact. He cursed them both, and instead of taking his lover into his arms, just as he’d so desperately wanted to, he went in for the kill, wrapping his fingers against Kurotsuchi’s throat until he felt his pulse thundering hard against his palm. For a moment, with Kurotsuchi’s heartbeat on his skin, Zaraki almost lost himself to his maelstrom of emotions: his hatred, his disgust for the man below him, his impotent anger and his grief at his inability to move him – and all of the lesser, mesmerizing, softer, shameful feelings that he knew to be unbecoming of a man of his stature. He couldn’t tolerate the thought of it: feeling the way he did, subjected to such tender thoughts for another man. He hated it, and yet he never wanted to let it go. 

He wanted to be with Kurotsuchi, always.

Every time they fucked, Zaraki always came inside of him. Kurotsuchi always looked so disgusted about it afterwards, when he was cleaning up the mess, but Zaraki knew that at the moment, he wouldn’t have had it any other way. It was an emasculating, primal kind of humiliation – having another man cum inside of him, using him for his own pleasure. There was something disgusting about it that made the very thought of it unacceptable to most men, and yet Kurotsuchi had mentioned, off-hand, that he wasn’t entirely certain whether he’d be able to finish, untouched, if Zaraki didn’t subject him to that very same shame, every single night. 

And he couldn’t have that. He would rather forsake his own pleasure than let Kurotsuchi go without. Even so, Zaraki wanted to steal a little something for himself.

Taking a risk, knowing that Kurotsuchi was too tired to fight him, Zaraki overstepped his boundaries and pressed his lips against his soft, blue hair. The pressure building up within him, his teetering orgasm, the pleasure and the pain, was nothing, then, compared to the warmth that had settled deep within his heart, consumed by the scent of chemical cyprinum. It pushed him over the edge. His thrusts grew stiff, losing their steady rhythm. His once silent breaths began to stutter, and with one last, deep thrust, Zaraki tucked his cock into Kurotsuchi’s ass and pumped thick, spurts of cum inside of him. 

Releasing his neck, Zaraki held him close, pulling his thin hips flush against his own and watching his body shudder, as he was made to take it all. He wanted to comfort him through the pain, to grace his face with the side of his hand, but Zaraki knew that he had a job to do. 

Though he was exhausted and overstimulated, he let go of Kurotsuchi and braced his hands on the floor. Sucking in a harsh, deep breath, he forced himself to move through the grinding pain. Pushed out from the force of his thrusts, his cum leaked out of Kurotsuchi’s ass and ran down his perineum. It made for a pitiful sight. Taking pity on his partner, Zaraki reached for his cock – but before he could so much as touch him, Kurotsuchi’s arm shot out like lightning, pinning his hand to the floor. His tendons, tense, he wove their fingers together, pressing his palm against Zaraki’s knuckles. Though was weak, and tired, and trembling, Kurotsuchi held him down with all the force of a stake through his hand. His thin, bony fingers, like nails between his knuckles. Zaraki wouldn’t have moved his hand if his very life depended on it. 

After all, even with a cock up his ass and his head on the floor, Kurotsuchi was a pharaoh, and Zaraki, nothing but a servant, just lucky to tend to him.


	3. Chapter 3

It was difficult to look upon him, the way he was now, and imagine that the trembling, tiny little thing, huddled in the corner of his bedroom, was the same commanding officer of the death squad that had led the bloodiest purge in Rukongai’s history. Twenty-eight thousand, dead in the streets. Corpses, heaped atop the funeral pyres. Billowing smoke rose up to the sky, blotting out the sun and turning the city sky dark. Bone-white ash drifted down like snowfall in the summertime. The heat of it was sickening, every step, like sinking into a boiling cauldron. Blood and steaming viscera, peeling skin and melting fat, falling from the bone, sank deep into the dirt. Even to that very day, not a single plant could sprout from the extermination grounds. Jizō’s poison had made certain of that. A poisoned sword bearing a holy man’s name had sucked the life from the very earth, itself. 

The extermination sounded cleaner on paper. Dull statistics and neat little charts. Seireitei was quick to hide the evidence: grinding up the bones, and burying the ashes, and sweeping all of Kurotsuchi’s ugly, little messes underneath the rug, just as they always did. Kurotsuchi wiped the blood off his shoes and walked away scot-free. Nobody ever mentioned his involvement in the tragedy, again. But even if no one wanted speak of it, they all knew the truth: the people of Rukongai had suffered a terrible fate at Kurotsuchi’s hands. 

The culling had been explained away as a necessary evil. Its anniversary, honored as a day of nationwide mourning, to pay homage to the thousands of lives that Gotei 13 had sacrificed in the name of the greater good and in the name of knowing better. Every year on Remembrance Day, countless Shinigami would gather at the site of the pyres and offer condolences to the lost souls, as though paper cranes and florals wreaths could ever hope to pay them recompense, when it was the Shinigami who had allowed those people to be slaughtered in the first place – and when their murderer still walked the streets, unpunished and unashamed.

It was strange, in a way. To Zaraki’s knowledge, almost everybody had felt guilty enough to visit the memorial site at least once, but Kurotsuchi just couldn’t be bothered – as though he didn’t understand the significance of it. 

Death came for everyone, or so he’d said; it came for some far sooner than others. In the grand scheme of things, whether he expedited that process for a certain subset of individuals was inconsequential. It wasn’t a matter of fair and unfair, just or unjust – it was simply the way of things. Dying was what people were expected to do, suffering was universal, as old as the human race, and he just couldn’t, for the life of him, understand why everyone made such a clamor about this one, particular event, every single summer. 

Especially when nobody seemed to give a damn about it during any other time of year. 

He didn’t understand the point of memorials and anniversaries. He didn’t _want_ to understand, when he was perfectly content to laugh at other people’s grief. Kurotsuchi was a man with no remorse and no empathy – for anyone. He was close to a monster as men came. But, when he was kneeling in that room with blood on his legs, Kurotsuchi made him forget. Zaraki took one, lingering look at him and turned out the threat of his rattling tail – and he saw a coiled viper as a wounded foal. 

“How’re you holding up?” he asked. “I wasn’t too rough, was I?”

Caught off-guard by the sound of his voice, Kurotsuchi froze. His tendons tensed, his spine, stiffening, as he looked back, casting a furtive glance at him over his shoulder. Their eyes met. Completely silent, Kurotsuchi, still as a statue, held his gaze, and for the longest time, they simply looked at each other. Kurotsuchi, studying his face, as though tracing his fortune in the wrinkles and scars – or perhaps he was only looking for chinks in his armor. Either way, whether connecting with him or searching for weaknesses, Zaraki found him just as frightening. No one else had ever looked at him with that same, quiet intensity. Nobody ever saw him the way that Kurotsuchi did. It jolted him like lightning; it took his breath away. 

If only he could freeze that instant, burn that moment, into his memory. 

He never wanted to let him go, but he didn’t have the opportunity to hold on tight. As quickly as Kurotsuchi had glanced back at him, he simply turned away, returning his gaze to the back of his hand and redirecting his attention to his splayed fingers and his broken nails. 

“No,” he answered, coldly dismissive, as he picked at the splinters. “I’m fine. You performed well enough, all things considered.”

Such a profound connection, followed by a crude, backhanded compliment – it stung like a slap across the cheek. Even so, biting back his disappointment, Zaraki stood his ground and feigned good cheer. One of them had to. He forced on a smile and tried to come closer.

“That’s good. I was worried about you for a minute.”

Kurotsuchi didn’t respond; he didn’t even look at him. The only indication that he’d heard him at all, the only sign that he’d been listening, was a gentle, muted breath and the languid movement of his bloodied hand, laid to rest atop of his thigh. 

“Were you?” he asked him, suddenly. His voice barely rose above a whisper; Zaraki couldn’t help but lean in closer, chasing after the ghosts. “I could feel the tension in your fingers when they wrapped around my neck. Even if the urge was temporary, there was a moment, back then, when you had earnestly considered strangling the life out of me. Wasn’t there?” 

“What’re you talking about? It was just sex,” Zaraki dismissed with forced, awkward laughter. He rubbed at the back of his neck, only for his fingers to come back, coated in a thin sheen of sweat. Frigid, it sank, cold, into the marrow of his bones. “Okay –” he admitted. “Yeah, maybe I think about throttling you sometimes when you piss me off, but it ain’t like I’ll ever go through with it, and it ain’t like the feeling ever lasts. Hell, if you actually died, who would I end up inviting back here every night?”

“You’d manage to find some unfortunate soul, I’m sure. Weren’t you the one who called me replaceable?” Kurotsuchi asked with a muted chuckle, strangely light-hearted, despite the looming sense of melancholia. Finally, gracing him with his attention, he looked back at him again, over his shoulder. Those golden eyes, sharp and clever, caught him like a spell. “By your testimony, you’d have another partner in your bed before my corpse had even cooled.”

It was a nauseating juxtaposition: the talk of death, of _replacement_ , followed by Kurotsuchi’s echoing laughter, mirthless and hollow. His smile, though wide and beaming, all sgolden teeth, never reached his eyes. The sight of it, the horror, froze the blood in Zaraki’s veins. Goosebumps rose upon his neck, hidden by his mane of tangled hair. 

He knew he’d made a grave mistake.

“Look, about what I said before… that wasn’t what I meant,” he insisted, “and I’m sorry if that’s what you got out of it, and if you felt like –”

“Don’t patronize me,” Kurotsuchi hissed. That sharp tone, strangely defensive, pierced him like an arrow, robbing him of all his momentum. To his embarrassment, Zaraki flinched, taken aback by the viper’s bite. “I know perfectly well where we stand. You don’t have to placate me with insincere apologies or feigned concern. I’m fine. I’ve sustained wounds far graver than this in the past, regardless.”

Even if that were true, however, it didn’t make his current bout of suffering any less significant. Kurotsuchi could stitch up the wounds and mask the bruises, but he would always remember the pain – and he would remember that Zaraki was the one who had caused it. 

“That doesn’t mean your wounds, now, don’t matter,” he countered, stubbornly crossing his arms. “I was worried about you after fighting Pernida, and I can be worried about how you’re holding up, now. Can’t I? What makes you think I’m faking any of that?”

“I repel you,” Kurotsuchi answered plainly, with a gentle shrug and all without so much as a moment’s hesitation. “You are only biding your time with me, here, until better options present themselves. Isn’t that what you said?”

“Maybe. But that’s not –”

“I don’t mind,” Kurotsuchi said, cutting him off. His tone was startling casual, as though he didn’t give a damn at all. But then, after a beat of uncomfortable silence, something changed: Kurotsuchi looked away, and his expression softened. He let out a quiet breath and ran his fingers through his hair, and all of the tension bled away from his bones. “Honestly, I don’t. It doesn’t matter,” he repeated, somewhat steadier, then, every bit as calm and quiet as his daughter had been. “But if I may ask something of you, Zaraki, I would prefer it if you could be candid.” 

“What do you mean?” Zaraki asked, shaking his head, baffled. “Candid about what?”

“About us. Human beings are inherently selfish. I never expected you to be any different. I can tolerate cruelty, if that’s what you want to show me, but what I simply cannot stand is this mindset of sanctimonious, moral superiority that’s been so pervasive in Seireitei, as of late. For one reason or another, everybody in this city seems so determined to appear to be better than they actually are. Hiding their crimes, and their baser desires, and shaming all of those who don’t – despite the fact that there was never anything wrong with being true to one’s nature, in the first place. To be honest, I’ve always hated it. Not so much the immorality as much as the fact that everyone seems too afraid to come to terms with it. If I may be candid, myself… I don’t want you to be like that,” he said, then, with a strange, unfitting smile that betrayed his true age – crinkling crow’s feet at the corners of his golden eyes. “Not here, and not with me. You can use my body and throw me to the wayside, if that’s what you’d like. You are under no obligation to care for me, in the slightest. But I would respect that decision more, if you had the courage to be honest about it.”

Honest like Kurotsuchi, himself, was –

Surely, that was what he’d meant. For better or worse, of all the Shinigami in Gotei 13, there were, perhaps, none so honest with themselves as Kurotsuchi Mayuri. It was one of the man’s only merits: he was never any better than he presented himself to be. He was a monster and a criminal, certainly – but what everybody saw was precisely what they got. He never tried to fool anybody, even to salvage his own reputation. Most everybody in Gotei 13 was a monster; Kurotsuchi was the only one that didn’t bother to hide it.

He wondered if that was what he valued more than kindness and honor – just cruel, unbridled honesty. 

For once, Zaraki just didn’t know what to say to him. He watched, hypnotized in a silent stupor, as Kurotsuchi clamped his bloodied fingernails around a piece of broken porcelain, buried in his elbow. Slowly, he worked out the shard, past the blood and the bone. It was only a tiny, little fragment of Yachiru’s broken lamp, but when Kurotsuchi let it go, it clattered against the floor with the shock of an atom bomb, bursting through Zaraki’s eardrums and sending his pillars, crashing down. 

“Look, _honestly_ , I’m sorry if I made you upset,” he said, if only because he knew of nothing else that could placate him. 

He hadn’t been expecting hugs and kisses at that revelation, certainly, but never, in his life, would he have expected Kurotsuchi’s calm smile to shift, sinister and morbid, to an expression of pure, crushing disappointment. He looked disappointed in _him_ – almost as though Zaraki had failed to meet even the lowest of his expectations. Giving up on him entirely, Kurotsuchi turned away, masking his face behind his veil of bloodstained hair. 

“Don’t be,” he scolded, sounding so disgusted with him that it sent a chill of primal terror shooting down Zaraki’s spine. “Just be quiet and leave me be. I’d like the opportunity to recover in silence before I go.”

Zaraki knew that he should have obeyed. He should have backed off and let Kurotsuchi run the show, just like he always did, but when he tried to move his feet, he found that they simply wouldn’t budge. 

“Are you sure you really want to leave? Now?” he asked. “No offense, but you don’t look so good, Kurotsuchi.”

“That’s inconsequential, isn’t it? No matter what excuses you’re making now, when you were angry with me, when you were _candid_ , you made it perfectly clear that you can’t wait to be rid of me. What fate befalls me after I leave this place is no concern of yours.”

Zaraki sputtered.

“Even if that was true – which it ain’t – you really think I want to get rid of you so bad that I’d kick you out in the snow? You think I’m such an asshole, I’d let you freeze to death?” he snapped, unable to hide his mounting frustration. “Is that really what you think about me?” he asked, incredulous, even when he already knew the answer to his question. Kurotsuchi thought he was a liar. He didn’t trust him – Zaraki had already proven that he couldn’t. Realizing that he was raising his voice, Zaraki took a deep breath and reigned in his outrage. “If you need to spend the night, that’s fine,” he offered. “I meant what I said last time: we don’t have to make this awkward. You can take the bed, and I’ll take the couch – or we can switch it up, if you’re still worried about those bedbugs.”

He put on his best smile, trying his damnest to lighten the mood, but Kurotsuchi only shook his head, silently reprimanding him. 

“I’m not interested.” 

There were no words of thanks and no reassurances. Even after all that time together, Zaraki still hadn’t earned the benefit of his civility. 

“Look at you… You can barely walk. You think you’ll make it out there in the snow?”

Kurotsuchi didn’t bother to dignify that with a response. After a few failed attempts at standing, he finally managed the impossible. His knees quaked as he pushed himself to his feet, his thin, boney limbs, struggling to support his weight. A sickening mixture of blood and cum dripped down his thighs, as he gathered up his clothing and stumbled, alone, into the hallway – always moving farther and farther away from him. Like a man possessed, Zaraki trailed blindly after him, chasing the scent of chemical cyprinum. When he finally caught up to him, he couldn’t stop himself from blocking his path. Zaraki hadn’t expected gratitude for exhibiting that kind of rudeness, certainly, but nothing had prepared him for the intensity of Kurotsuchi’s hatred. That cold, hard gaze, bitter enough to freeze his tendons and blacken his fingers, snuffing out what little hope he’d had for the two of them. Stunned by Kurotsuchi’s frigid contempt for him, Zaraki took a step back, distancing himself. 

“Don’t be a dumbass,” he practically pleaded. “You’ll freeze to death if you go out there. Why don’t you just spend the night?” He would have to rephrase the offer; he could already see the disinterest, the irritation, glinting in Kurotsuchi’s eyes. “At least sit down for a minute. You want me to get you something to drink while you relax? I can put on the kettle, if you want. I don’t know what you like, but I got packets of Yachiru’s old hot chocolate and… I got coffee.” Well, didn’t that sound appealing. “It’s the instant kind, but it really ain’t that bad.”

Refusing to answer, Kurotsuchi pushed past him and began hanging up his clothing in the bathroom. 

“Kurotsuchi –”

“Before you even think of conjuring up another simpering argument, allow me to save you the trouble,” Kurotsuchi snapped back at him, cutting him off. “To be perfectly honest, Zaraki, I would rather fall unconscious in the snow and freeze to death than to so much as humor the intolerable notion of staying in this filthy hovel with you for another grueling minute. Now, then, if you’re quite finished, I would like to hurry and return home before the snow starts falling in earnest.” 

Stunned by his outburst, Zaraki’s courage vaporized. Though he had so much left to say, his tongue turned to stone, and he couldn’t form the words. Helpless, he watched as the bathroom door slammed shut with resounding finality. At that moment, it seemed, strangely enough, that the violence of that slamming door had snapped his bond with Kurotsuchi, once and for all, and just like that, he had nothing left. 

All of his closest personal ties were gone. 

Though Zaraki’s friends and peers in the Eleventh Division still supported him, he couldn’t help but feel, in a way, that losing Yachiru and Unohana had cut him off from the most intimate part of himself – the part of him that was more than just his title and the sword in his hands. Yachiru trusted him and made him a father. Unohana gave him a name and made him a man. The only other person to see him just as weak, the only person he could _allow_ to see him weak, at that point, was Kurotsuchi. When he’d already lost both of the most important women in his life, the thought of losing _him_ set Zaraki into a panic. He couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. His vision tunneled, darkness, creeping into the corners of his vision 

He didn’t want to lose him. 

Perhaps they didn’t have much in the way of a relationship, but they still had _something_. Something fragile and precious, just between the two of them, and sequestered away from the rest of the world. 

He wanted to keep that close.

When Kurotsuchi exited the bathroom, Zaraki was standing right where he’d left him, staring straight at the door, his blank gaze, a thousand miles away. It must have been an odd sight, one that warranted a comment or two, but instead of asking if he was alright, or if he had anything at all to say for himself, determined to follow the age-old tradition of ignoring each other once the deed was one, Kurotsuchi pretended as though Zaraki didn’t exist. Pushing past him, he returned his makeup case to its hiding place and started off towards the door.

Watching Kurotsuchi walk away was like seeing his future slip between his fingertips like sand within his palms. A jolt of fear, the terror sparked by the thought of losing his one, last tie to his own humanity, sparked against Zaraki’s nerves, and before he could so much as process a single thought, his mouth was already moving.

“Hey,” he interjected, even when it was clear that Kurotsuchi wouldn’t be turning back. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Okay?”

Though he knew that Kurotsuchi would always come back to him, shaken as he was, Zaraki needed some degree of reassurance. He wanted to hear it. To see it. A promise in Kurotsuchi’s voice, or even a silent acknowledgement, would have made it real. Only then could he let go of the uncertainty, find his foundation, and move on with his life. 

He’d waited for that silent nod, or that dismissive, yet confirmatory scoff, but instead, there was the absence of an answer. In response to his question, Kurotsuchi froze mid-step, right in the hallway. He paused for a moment, as though his time had stopped, before he quietly lowered his foot to the floor. For what felt like ages, he stood perfectly still, deep in thought, like Jizō, under the waterfall. He was motionless: a little idol, carved in ebony and ivory. Zaraki couldn’t bear the dread; he could feel it aging him, carving wrinkles on his wind-burned flesh. But then Kurotsuchi looked back at him. His eyes, bright gold, surrounded by a pool of inky black skin, made contact with his, and he snapped back to the present.

“Actually, I would like to postpone our meetings for the time being,” Kurotsuchi said, finally, sounding as confident, as coldly logical, as he always did, even while slamming the axe against Zaraki’s neck. Zaraki’s stomach dropped, a heavy weight in the pit of his gullet. He could feel the dryness of his mouth, the lack of air in his lungs, as every muscle stiffened in silent horror. “I’ve been running behind on my research, lately,” Kurotsuchi continued. “In truth, I have been, ever since I started seeing you. My productivity has been decreasing. I’ve been spending too much time here, in this house, instead of in the S.R.D.I. where I should have been from the very start. I can’t justify that, anymore.”

From Kurotuschi’s tone, confident and firm, it was clear that there wasn’t any room for discussion. It was his way or the highway, just like it always way. 

“So… what are you saying? This ain’t permanent, is it? Will you come back when your workload goes down? When am I going to see you again?” Zaraki asked him, dumbstruck. “Will I _ever_ see you again?”

Kurotsuchi only blinked back at him, his head, tilted in morbid curiosity, as though he couldn’t believe that Zaraki was really stupid enough to ask. 

“I was under the impression that it didn’t matter to you, one way or another.”

Before Zaraki could so much as formulate a rebuttal, Kurotsuchi had already turned his back to him. The rejection stung him like a flashbang. Relentless pressure, a fury of sound, built up within Zaraki’s chest, though whether he would scream, or shout, or wail if he dared to let it out, he didn’t know. It threatened to burst from his throat like a deluge, crashing through the room like monsoon floodwaters. A part of him wanted to weep, to throw himself to the floor and cling onto Kurotsuchi’s ankles, begging for mercy, whereas another part of him entirely wanted to threaten him. To force him to stay out of fear and embarrassment. _Stay_ , or he would tell the world about everything he did to him. Zaraki knew, however, that even the most drastic attempts at coercion would have been pointless. Once he’d made up his mind, there wasn’t a force in all the world that could change it. The two hands of the Soul King wouldn’t have been able to stop him from walking out that door. 

Time slowed to a standstill. Nauseated by the horror, Zaraki watched as that pale, painted hand came to rest upon his doorknob. At that moment, Zaraki’s home fell apart. The four, faded walls around him, the floors and the furniture, all stripped away, and the entire universe boiled down to nothing more than just the two of them. Zaraki, watching, helpless, as Kurotsuchi opened the door in slow motion. 

Cold, winter air rushed in, carrying with it a whirl of falling snow, white as sun-drenched bone. White as Kurotsuchi’s painted skin, disappearing into the flurry. Just like that, he left him, and them, and all of their warmth and their closeness behind, and slammed the door shut with resounding finality. That horrible sound echoed through his brain, piercing his eardrums like Ashisogi Jizō, gliding in between his ribs. 

It was a fatal blow, killing him instantly; it didn’t take long for the rigor to set in. 

Zaraki didn’t have an estimate on just how long he’d stood there, afterwards, staring blankly at the wooden door. His mind raced, hair trigger neurons set on rapid fire, tens of thousands of thoughts, like fireworks, dispersing into the ether in a lost, pathless flight. Beneath it all, however, Zaraki knew of one universal truth: he should have run after him. He should have followed, but he just couldn’t bring himself to move. Almost as though he were trapped in a nightmare, Zaraki could feel the weakness, like pins and needles, settling in his limbs. His bones felt like gelatin, his joints, like breakaway glass, cursed to crumble at the slightest touch. 

He should have gone after him. 

He had no choice. No other option. He just didn’t know what he was waiting for: a sign, perhaps, or divine intervention. Jizō Bosatsu or Ashisogi, manifesting behind him to shove him out the door. To scream in his ears and tell him to _run_. He waited and waited for a god to speak, but all that hummed between his ears was static. The pieces of his world all peeled away, going white, and he could feel himself lifting out of his body, escaping his skin.

It all just fell apart.

But then, above even the sound of the wind, Zaraki heard it, returning his spirit to his skin and bones. Kurotsuchi slammed his garden gate shut; Yachiru’s braided chain of bells, tied to the handle, knocked up against the wood and jingled brightly through the winter air. The sound of it, those dancing bells, hit him like a starting pistol. Within milliseconds, Zaraki’s racing mind, lost in the stars, screeched to a halt, slamming against an invisible wall and falling back down to his paralyzed body. As though struck by a whip, he burst into action, knocking over beer cans and framed photographs in his mad scramble out the door.

Lost in the dark, Zaraki stumbled through the snow, chasing after his partner like a blind man. The chill set into his body. With every minute spent in the storm, he felt the stiffness creeping into his joints. The howling wind tore into his skin like razorblades against his flesh, and still, he pressed onward, undeterred. 

“Kurotsuchi!”

He saw him in the distance, like a wraith against the shadows. White robes and whiter skin. He didn’t turn back to look at him. 

Sucking in a deep, shuddering breath that froze the air in the lungs, Zaraki braced himself against the wind and stumbled through the heavy snowfall, letting it seep into his trousers and freeze against his skin. By the time that he caught up to him, they were nearly at the bridge, far from his home, and yet Kurotsuchi didn’t look at all surprised to see him.

“Kurotsuchi, _wait_!” 

“…What is it?” he asked. That calm, unwavering apathy, hard and still, was unsettlingly uncanny.

Zaraki swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. He must have looked a frightful mess, standing there, with his fly undone and his robes falling open, slipping off his shoulders and exposing his chest. In panicked desperation, he’d rushed out of his house without even throwing on a coat. The snow melted against his flesh, chilling him down to the marrow of his bones. When he opened his mouth to speak, he couldn’t form the words. His lips, frozen, chapped, and pale, struggled to gain traction. 

It was startling, in a way, how Kurotsuchi could look so perfectly immaculate in comparison to him. Even in the raging winds and the bitterest cold, he carried himself like a little god, like something greater, something higher, than man, untouched by pain and earthly ties. The paint gave him poise, the gold, grandiosity. A god made flesh, auspicious and proud, walking straight from the pages of the ancient mythos. Even the snow didn’t dare to touch him. It slipped off his shoulders, the snowflakes, too cowed by his glory to overstay their welcome. 

Kurotsuchi cut a startling figure, an otherworldly silhouette, against the backdrop of the falling snow. 

As he looked upon him, watching him stand perfectly still as the wind fluttered violently against his robes, a peace fell over the bridge, and a warmth settled deep within Zaraki’s heart. He wanted time to stop. He wanted to be able to look at him, as he was in that moment, lovely and horrific, grotesque and pristine, for just a little while longer. 

“I… wanted to clear the air,” he said at last. “I didn’t want you to leave thinking that –” That he hated him, or that their time together didn’t matter. That he was replaceable, and that Zaraki wouldn’t have given a damn if he’d simply dropped dead, one day, never to be seen again. “I don’t want you to think that I meant any of the crap that I said about you. And I don’t want you to think that I was only trying to take it back because I felt bad about using you – or because I felt bad for you, in general. I wasn’t trying to placate you, and I wasn’t just trying to make myself feel better.”

For a moment, Zaraki wondered whether Kurotsuchi was even listening at all. Beneath his mask of makeup, hard ebony and ivory, his expression was as unreadable as ever. Distant and impassive. 

“I didn’t mean it,” Zaraki repeated. “Not a single fucking word. I swear. I was just pissed off – pissed at _you_ – and I just said whatever the hell I could think of that could make you feel as low as I did. I let my mouth run when I shouldn’t have, and I wish I could take it back. But what I regret more than anything is ever saying that I was ashamed. …That I was ashamed about _us_ ,” Zaraki clarified, even if it was less a proud declaration and more a timid, muted mumble. If it made him unmanly, if it made him undeniably gay, then so be it. Humiliating as it was, there was something freeing in acknowledging that there was, in fact, a _them_. Not just two, uncommitted men who didn’t give a damn about each other. 

“You don’t have to apologize,” Kurotsuchi replied, crossing his arms. He looked so infallible at that moment, like a perfect marble statue that neither time nor cold could touch. He was bigger than the pharaohs. Bigger than the gods, free from shame and stigma, so high above it all. He could shrug off curses, slings, and arrows, ignoring the damage, just like he always did. Or perhaps his indifference was all just an act from the very beginning. As calm as Kurotsuchi appeared, after all, Zaraki knew, logically, that he must have wounded him, for him to cancel all of their meetings on a whim like that. “You can say whatever you’d like about me. I’ve heard far worse from better men.”

“Maybe. Everyone’s got something to say to you, don’t they? But even if everyone in Seireitei gangs up and turns against you – hell, even if you’re used to it – you shouldn’t be hearing things like that from me,” Zaraki insisted, with far more sincerity than he’d ever intended. Never, in hundreds of years, had he thought himself capable of summoning that kind of passion. Zaraki had always been a warrior-type, a rough and tumble, brutish kind of man, but there he was, talking like the dandies straight out of Yachiru’s serial novels. “Because even if we hate each other and there are times that I just can’t fucking put up with you, it doesn’t change the fact that you’re…” Zaraki shook his head, his mind, struggling, desperately, to bring sound and form to a word he never thought he’d have to say; he never thought he’d have the chance. “You’re my _lover_. The only one I ever had. And maybe I don’t know exactly what that means, but I know that it has to mean _something_. You said that you wanted me to be honest, didn’t you? Well, the truth is that you were right: I’ve had a lot of options over the years, a lot of women that wanted to come home with me, but out of everyone in Seireitei, I chose to be with you. I still do, and I owe you some goddamn loyalty for that. More loyalty than I showed you. It doesn’t matter who comes around, Kurotsuchi; I’ll choose to be with you every damn time. I ain’t ashamed of that. I ain’t ashamed of _you_. I never wanted to make you think that you didn’t mean anything to me.” 

For once, silver tongue turned to lead, Kurotsuchi didn’t say a goddamn thing. He only stood there in the snow, watching him, paralyzed. Waiting for the sword or the punchline to fall. Always so infallible, he never broke eye contact, even when it was clear that he was losing his confidence. His expression was blank, unreadable as ever, but there was a strange and foreign uncertainty in his posture. When he crossed his arms, instead of standing proudly, Kurotsuchi seemed to huddle into himself. Zaraki watched as Kurotsuchi’s feet shifted in the snow, turning away from him, almost as though he could turn tail and run at any moment. 

“…Is this regarding what I said earlier?” Kurotsuchi asked, his voice, barely above a whisper. “About postposing our meetings?”

“Kind of. It made me feel like you were punishing me – and it made me realize I deserved it. I know I do, and maybe this is selfish, but I still don’t want things to end like that. At the very least, I want you to know where we _really_ stand. I’m not trying to manipulate you or get you to come back right away. I get it if you still don’t want to see me for a while. But I wanted to let you know that I ain’t going to replace you. I’ll wait for you to come back. No matter how long it takes.” 

After saying his piece, in the face of that crushing, awkward silence, all of Zaraki’s momentum, all of his passion, drained out of his body as quickly as it had sparked. Overcome by embarrassment and shame, he lost his nerve; he couldn’t bear to look upon him any longer. 

Not until he heard a quiet, familiar sigh.

It took him a moment to realize that it was the very same tone that Kurotsuchi took when he surrendered to Nemuri. She would beg him for ice cream money or pester him to bring back cookies from the captain’s meetings, every now and then. Kurotsuchi put up a fight every time. He’d complain and grumble, but in the end, he’d always relent, packing up a cookie or two in a little paper napkin before leaving, at the end of the day. Nemuri would look so happy to see him, practically bouncing on her heels, and he’d look down at her and sigh that same old sigh.

It was exasperation and bubbling annoyance – with an undeniable trace of genuine fondness. 

The sound of it sucked the breath from Zaraki’s lungs. 

“You don’t have to. You’ll see me tomorrow, after all,” Kurotsuchi stated, just like that. No questions asked. “That is, if my companionship truly means so much to you.”

It did.

“I thought you said you were running behind on your research,” Zaraki answered tentatively, still struck by disbelief. 

“I am. I’ll find a way to make time for you, regardless.” 

Spurred on by nothing more than that quiet display of rare generosity, joy and relief crashed over Zaraki like a tidal wave, and he felt a smile, soft yet unrelenting, tugging at the corners of his lips. 

“I’ll make it worth your while. I swear. You won’t regret coming back to me.”

“…I never do.”

For the first time that evening, the silence that settled between them came as more of a comfort than anything else. For a pensive, lingering moment, standing in the curtain of snowfall, Zaraki stood so close to him, he could see the blue of his eyelashes. He wanted to reach out and touch him, but he settled for carving that moment into his history books. 

“Hey,” Zaraki prompted, feeling bold, “you want me to walk you back? I don’t mind. Really.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re in no condition to go anywhere. You’re so cold, I can hear your teeth chattering,” Kurotsuchi scolded, turning his face. His fingers curled around the rim of his hat, lowering it by just a centimeter, shielding his eyes. It was a strangely timid gesture – one that Zaraki would never forget. “Go home, Zaraki. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

They parted on Kurotsuchi’s terms, just as always, without a parting kiss or a wish goodnight. Just a quick dismissal, so typically him. 

As Zaraki stood by the bridge, watching Kurotsuchi vanish into the swirling blizzard, the adrenaline began to wear away, and a pain shot up his ankles. He’d been standing outside in the snow for so long that he’d lost the feeling in his feet. It hadn’t registered with him, until that moment, that he’d been barefoot the entire time. In his panic, his sandals had fallen off in the snow: the winter ice, melting between his bare, blue toes. The tingling pain quivered up his legs, settling in his knees. The roots of his teeth stung from the bitter wind, but still, as he watched Kurotsuchi’s silhouette disappear into the darkness of the woods, Zaraki didn’t move. 

Neither pain nor cold could reach him.

Content as he was, Zaraki would have stood, frozen in the snow, until the coming of spring, just to have the privilege of watching over Kurotsuchi for just a little while longer.


	4. Chapter 4

Something had changed, deep within him, ever since the night that he’d chased after his lover through the falling snow. Ever since that night, at any given moment, Zaraki was inevitably, always, thinking of him. 

Kurotsuchi had already left for the evening, and yet Zaraki couldn’t let him go. Even as he tried, desperately, to focus his attention on scrubbing the blood from his tatami mats, he couldn’t stop his mind and his gaze from drifting away. His single eye wandered, running across the floor and crawling up the leg of his tea table, climbing higher, up and up, until it reached the glass of water, teetering precariously over the edge. Still unsatisfied, his gaze climbed higher still, ignoring the cup and its contents, both unremarkable, to focus in on that smear of black lipstick, swiped against the rim. It pulled him in like a vortex, dark and sinister.

He felt his heart quiver, and his eyelids fluttered shut. Behind closed eyes, Zaraki could still see the ghost of Kurotsuchi’s afterimage. It stood, statuesque, in his living room, bone-white and clad in gold, like a heathen god, stooping so low as to stand before a mortal man, gracing his cluttered home with its auspicious, cruel divinity. Zaraki could barely begin to comprehend the juxtaposition of it: pride and beauty, in spite of great evil, displayed beside discount furniture and flickering lightbulbs. 

Kurotsuchi deserved so much better. 

Better than cracked drinking glasses and hard tap water. Zaraki had known, long ago, that he should have replaced his filter, but for the longest time, going through the motions had seemed like such an insurmountable task – just like washing his linens, and emptying the garbage, and dragging himself out of bed always did on the mornings when he felt most base. He’d triumphed over the strongest warriors in Seireitei’s history, and yet there were days when Zaraki could be defeated by a simple pile of laundry, festering in the corner of his bedroom. Sometimes, he just couldn’t be bothered to deal with it. It was easier to take care of himself when Yachiru was there to give him a reason. 

He hadn’t even realized how far he’d fallen, how little attention he’d paid to himself, until Kurotsuchi had asked him for a glass of water that evening. Zaraki had never thought twice about the state of his water until Kurotsuchi had watched him pour it, straight from the tap. He’d given him a quick look of apprehension, but he’d taken a sip, all the same – and he’d _winced_ , his painted face, contorting in scathing disgust. That withering glare, shot over his shoulder, was frigid enough to turn Zaraki’s bones to jelly. Even hours later, he shuddered just to remember the sight. 

When the sun rose, he would have to replace that goddamn filter. Zaraki didn’t mind subsisting with iron in his water and sweat stains on his sheets, but he knew, now, that they bothered Kurotsuchi. Zaraki was still too apathetic to take care of himself, at times, but could go through the motions, if it was for him. He would do it because he loved him.

He loved him, dearly. He didn’t care to run from that revelation any longer. 

The evening moonlight, trickling through his window, reflected brightly off his drinking glass, so blindingly white against the contrast of Kurotsuchi’s black lipstick. Enraptured by the sight, Zaraki felt his throat constrict, and before he knew it, he was moving. Crawling on the tatami mats, he inched closer and watched, helpless, as his fingers curled around the glass, one after another. 

Though Kurotsuchi’s hand had left no mark, he could still imagine the sight of it, so different from his own. Zaraki had a warrior’s hands: thick-skinned and calloused, with dirt beneath his fingernails, but Kurotsuchi’s had always looked so fragile. Painted and manicured, unfit for combat. It was difficult to imagine the blood on those hands – difficult to imagine a warrior who killed, not with the swing of a sword but with the push of a button. Zaraki knew, however, that it didn’t make Kurotsuchi any less lethal. He was not a man who killed mercifully. Those hands had brought so much suffering into the world, so much needless grief, and yet, despite it all, Zaraki wanted nothing more than to find some solace in that touch. He wanted to hold those hands in his. To cradle his wind-burned cheek in the warmth of Kurotsuchi’s painted palm. 

He didn’t care, anymore, for the morality of it. For good or for ill, he loved him too much. 

Swallowing hard around the lump in his throat, Zaraki aligned his lips with the mark of Kurotsuchi’s lipstick and tilted back the glass. And he knew, from the very first taste of charcoal on his tongue, that he was drowning. He had been for a while, now – wading through the shore for hours, spellbound by the contrast of the stars on the waves. Brightest white and darkest black, calling him deeper into the sea. He hadn’t even realized that the tide had risen, but perhaps it was better to be swept away. To lift his feet and allow himself to sink into the roaring sea. If he was destined to drown, Zaraki much preferred to go softly, to close his eyes and drift away, instead of struggling fruitlessly against the tide, cutting his palms against the jagged rocks, just to end up at the very same place, at the end of it all. 

He couldn’t overturn the inevitable.

In a way, Zaraki didn’t want to. Water in his lungs or fangs against his wrist, he wanted to surrender to him in a thousand different ways. 

_________________________________________

He wanted to do something kind for him: something that could begin to make up for all of the times that they’d argued, and for all of the times that Zaraki had failed to defend him. 

Nobody in Gotei 13 was ever put on trial quite as frequently as Kurotsuchi and the Twelfth. Yamamoto had been the worst of his critics from the very start. That old man never let him forget where he came from, always dangling that prison sentence over his head like a threat and a promise. Zaraki couldn’t remember how many times he’d let it happen: how often he’d said nothing as Yamamoto berated Kurotsuchi, and his division, and everything he represented. He couldn’t remember how many times that he and the others had joined in, striking their matches after Yamamoto had already poured on the gasoline. 

It had happened so often, Zaraki lost count. 

To Kurotsuchi’s credit, he never seemed to care. He was dauntless, standing tall, proud and unyielding, alone in his corner against a united front of twelve – but that strength didn’t make Zaraki’s inaction any less unjust. It didn’t change the fact that he was never on his side. He wanted to make up for that. Zaraki wanted to prove himself.

Sitting at his tea table, Zaraki set the plates as best as he could, his clumsy fingers, fumbling over teacups and polished porcelain, as he put the finishing touches on his little surprise. Serving tea didn’t suit him in the slightest, but he could endure a bit of pomp and circumstance, when he knew how Kurotsuchi loved his formalities. Determined to do it right, following all of the rules, Zaraki made an effort to correct his posture, tucking his legs beneath him and sitting up in perfect seiza, despite the tendons in his ankles, screaming back at him in protest. He must have made for a ridiculous sight – one that would have had Yachiru shrieking with laughter had she had the chance to see him, then: a glorified bandit with chipped teeth and sweaty clothes, pouring tea like a proper dandy. 

He didn’t have a doubt in his mind that Kurotsuchi would end up laughing just as hard. When Zaraki heard his bathroom door creak open, his entire body tensed. His fingernails dug little, red crescents into his thighs, as he prepared himself to face the worst of Kurotsuchi’s mockery. 

Veiled by a cloud of swirling steam, Kurotsuchi stalked through the doorway like a wraith. His was an ethereal beauty, a dangerous, vicious brand of grace – otherworldly. Whether he closer to a god or a demon, however, Zaraki simply didn’t know. Perhaps he’d always been a little bit of both – or perhaps it was all just a matter of perception. One fact, however, was undeniable: the moment that Kurotsuchi saw that tea set, all his divinity melted away, and he was left as nothing more and nothing less than _human_. Golden eyes, blown wide, he froze up like a deer in the headlights. He took a step back, and then another, before his hand shot out towards the doorknob with lightning speed. His fingertips had only grazed the metal before they pulled back, suddenly, suspended in midair, motionless. It was almost as though Kurotsuchi’s sense of reason had overpowered reflex, at that moment, and he realized, then, that shutting himself away in the bathroom wouldn’t solve anything. 

Zaraki wasn’t going anywhere – and neither was he. 

Kurotsuchi was a pragmatic type of man, never too proud to run from conflict when the odds fell out of his favor, but there could be no escape for him, now. Cornered like a rat, he stood in the doorway, frozen. His hand, still hovered in the air, never so much as quivered. Kurotsuchi didn’t blink. He didn’t so much as _breathe_. After such a steady, prolonged stillness, even the slightest movements shook Zaraki like an earthquake. 

The uncertainty set his heart racing. 

Slowly, line by line, Kurotsuchi’s painted marble cracked: his eyes narrowed, and he tightened his jaw. Sheer, unspeakable contempt twisted across his face as he tugged his arm down to his side with an almost violent speed.

“…What is this?” he asked. It sounded more like an interrogation than simple curiosity. 

At that moment, his usual, lilting tones had dropped down an octave, his every word, dripping with a vicious brand of cynicism that Zaraki had never encountered in the past. Not from anyone. Even in combat, Kurotsuchi never sounded so hostile. 

Zaraki was the one who wanted to freeze up, then, but he knew that he couldn’t afford to doubt himself. It would have drained the momentum from him completely. He had to let the fear slide off his back like water. 

“What’s it look like?” he asked, in turn, trying his best to shrug off his growing uncertainty. Reaching for the kettle, Zaraki poured him a cup of tea and slid it gently across the table. “It’s tea, you dumbass. Hurry up and sit down. It’s already starting to get cold from the ten years you spent dolling yourself up in the bathroom.”

In any other situation, that kind of language would have earned him a blade to the throat and the lecture of a lifetime. At that moment, however, stunned either by the sight of the tea or the audacity of the man who served it, Kurotsuchi didn’t say a single word. Silver tongue turned to lead, he stood, silent and motionless, in the trenches of the doorway. His pupils, a startling contrast to his golden irises, locked onto the teacup and scrutinized its contents with such frigid intensity that Zaraki wondered whether the porcelain wouldn’t shatter from the pressure of it all. 

_He_ was about to shatter, just from the anticipation. 

When almost a full minute of _nothing_ had passed, with a cold sweat, running down his back, Zaraki was just about to pack up the plates and give on him, entirely. Before he had a chance to move, however, the spirit seemed to return to Kurotsuchi’s motionless body. Limb by limb, joint by joint, that painted marble came back life, creeping from the doorway with an agonizing slowness, his every footstep, carefully deliberate. Before he knelt across from him at the table, Kurotsuchi slipped his toes beneath the cushion and raised it up, stealing a glance at the shadows beneath it. His gaze lingered longer than Zaraki expected, almost as though Kurotsuchi couldn’t believe that he hadn’t found a pitfall or a pressure plate lying in wait for him, ready to blow his bones into a crater and paint the damn moon cherry pie red. 

He found _nothing_ , and yet Kurotsuchi’s cynicism didn’t seem to waver. The heavy sigh that escaped his lips seemed to carry with it a lifetime’s weight of burdens. It was a strange and mournful sound, a calm resignation and reluctant acceptance. Kurotsuchi let the cushion and gave it one last, gentle kick before kneeling down upon it. 

“What’s with that suspicious look?” Zaraki asked, only half-joking. “You think I’m trying to murder you, or something?” 

“You’ve tried it once, already,” he shrugged, twisting the ends of his long, curled hair around his fingertip. “I drank your filthy tap water. I may have run a full panel of bloodwork, afterwards, but some of those titers have up to a three percent error rate. That’s not particularly comforting.”

“Relax, would you?” Zaraki dismissed, brushing off the accusations. “I already replaced the water filter, so you don’t got anything to worry about, this time. Not that you had any reason to get all pissy about it in the first place. I drank the tap water here for years, and I’m fine, ain’t I?”

“That’s debatable. You’re alive, certainly, but the same can be said of the slime molds, growing in my incubator. Perhaps that tainted water is the very reason why you demonstrate a similar, primitive level of intelligence.”

He was just about to snap back at him when Zaraki began to realize something curious. During difficult situations, it always seemed as though Kurotsuchi went out of his way to be antagonistic. Towards what end, however, Zaraki didn’t know. He silenced himself and leaned in closer, studying Kurotsuchi’s blank expression.

“…Are you trying to piss me off on purpose?” Zaraki asked, refusing to take the bait, like he’d always done so readily in the past. “It always seems like you try to start a fight when there’s something you don’t want to talk about.” 

That unreadable expression wavered, a crack, appearing in his porcelain mask. His brow line twitched, and he narrowed his eyes, and yet Kurotsuchi didn’t say a single word. It was only the sudden, pensive tapping of his index finger against the edge of Zaraki’s hardwood table that gave away any indication that he’d heard him at all. 

“So, what is it you don’t want to answer? Kurotsuchi… don’t tell me you really think I’d try to kill you.” 

For a moment, it appeared as though Kurotsuchi wouldn’t so much as answer him, but when he finally spoke, unexpectedly, instead of dodging the question or aiming it back at him, for once in his life, he spoke plainly. 

“You wouldn’t be the first to attempt it,” he admitted, “and I doubt that you would be the last. I ward off an average of fourteen assassination attempts every year. I’ve survived one, this month, already. Pray tell, Zaraki, do you intend to make that two?”

“You tell me,” he challenged, pushing him just a little bit further. He wanted an answer. “I’m sure you already found out the odds of my betrayal, and everything.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kurotsuchi scoffed. “There’s no formula for something like that.”

“Then I guess it just comes down to… whether or not you trust me.” 

With a fleeting twitch of an encouraging smile, Zaraki nudged the teacup just a little bit closer. Still, despite his prompting, Kurotsuchi didn’t reach for it. Instead, sitting completely still, Kurotsuchi looked up at him, and their eyes met. Holding his gaze, he seemed to search his face, his wrinkles, his eyes, for a sign of some sorts, the details and meaning of which, Zaraki could never hope to understand. Perhaps Kurotsuchi was looking for a sign of betrayal, after all – or perhaps it was malice or selfishness. Whatever it was, whatever it could have possibly been, Kurotsuchi didn’t seem to find it. 

He looked away and released a quiet breath that Zaraki hadn’t noticed he’d been holding. 

“That’s the secret to my longevity. I don’t trust anyone. I never have,” he said, hypocritical. Despite Kurotsuchi’s antipathy and all his venomous cynicism, Zaraki watched as his thin, little fingers, curled delicately around the teacup, all the same. “And yet in spite of that, here I am, placing my faith in a fool like you. …How pathetic.” 

Bowing his head in quiet self-admonishment, Kurotsuchi let his eyes fall closed, his thin, bony shoulders, trembling with silent, mocking laughter. Beneath the shadow of his makeup, a wry, subtle smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. It was a delicate sight, strangely subdued, that Zaraki tucked away into the corners of his memory, along with all of the other treasures of his life. Along with memories of Yachiru, holding his hand as they walked through summer fair. Of her, tearing off a piece of her taiyaki for him, waving it over his shoulder and letting the custard drip onto his back. 

With a bittersweet ache in the pit of his chest, Zaraki realized that sharing tea with Kurotsuchi was a memory, now, that was just as precious.

He couldn’t help but smile, warmed by memories of her and the image of _him_ , raising his cup in a cheeky, mock toast, before bringing it up to his darkened lips. Kurotsuchi took only single sip before he paused, suddenly, as though lost in thought.

“Well?” Zaraki asked, still smiling like a fool. “What do you think?”

“I recognize this scent,” he commented, quiet and pensive, as he swirled the tea within its cup. There was a curious glint in Kurotsuchi’s eyes, a trace of curiosity, though he didn’t look entirely displeased. “This is shincha, isn’t it?” 

“You got it. First harvest of the year and everything.” 

“I suspected as much.” Lowering the cup to the table, Kurotsuchi stared down into its contents. With a subtle tilt of his head, he watched the steam rise against the cool air of Zaraki’s living room. “That’s… interesting.”

“What is?” he asked. “The tea?”

“Not so much as the fact that you are the one who purchased it. Shincha has always fetched a notoriously high price on the market, and yet it’s difficult for most people to appreciate the quality. The difference between the first and second flush is remarkably subtle. I doubt that most would ever be able to notice the difference. It’s become a rather common sentiment, as of late, that shincha often isn’t worth the money. In truth, I would have expected that you would be of that very same mindset. For a man who stocks nothing in his cupboard but expired chocolate powder and cheap, instant coffee, this is a surprisingly discerning choice.”

“What can I say?” Zaraki laughed, shaking off the praise with a gentle roll of his shoulders. The smile, spreading across his face, was an unstoppable force that he couldn’t hope to repress. “You’re always making little, smartass comments about the tea they serve up in the meeting hall. You know – saying that it tastes like a kid’s apple juice, or that the leaves are old, or it’s all one note. To tell you the truth, I can’t really tell the difference between this ‘shincha’ and everything else, but I know it matters to you. I wanted to get you something nice. I… wanted you to like it. I didn’t think you’d be too impressed with bagged shit everyone else drinks, anyway.”

The sound of Zaraki’s quiet laughter faded off into the distance. For the longest time, Kurotsuchi didn’t say much of anything at all. Seemingly lost in thought, he stroked his painted nail against the porcelain rim of his teacup. It was a quiet sound, a quiet scratch, that tore through the quiet of the room like an atom bomb. 

“Was that your intention from the start?” Kurotsuchi asked him, suddenly, breaking the silence. “Were you… attempting to impress me?” 

Caught off guard by the earnestness of that question, Zaraki bristled. Almost reflexively, he straightened his back, giving himself a few more centimeters of height to bolster his confidence – not that such a primitive trick had ever worked for him, against a man like Kurotsuchi. He was small, for a man, but he made for an intimidating conversationalist, nonetheless. He was clever and outspoken, yet dangerously subtle when he needed to be. In truth, the sheer difference in their intelligence frightened Zaraki, at times. It was easier to trade jokes with Yumichika and Ikkaku when they all stood on the same ground – when they were all just ordinary men. But Kurotsuchi always blazed so much brighter than he did. It was only when they were together that Zaraki came to notice his own inadequacies: his glaring lack of eloquence, his lack of composure. When he was with Kurotsuchi, he never knew what to say for himself. 

“What’s so weird about wanting to impress you?” he asked, stumbling, slightly, over his words. “You’re the Captain of the Twelfth. The Director of the research division. I figured all the junior scientists would be trying to suck up and get on your good side.”

“Not like this.” 

Kurotsuchi let out a harsh, rumbling sigh – one that could have been mistaken as a quiet breath of _laughter_ , had it come from any other man. It was simply too nervous, too awkward, too innocent a sound, for a man as cynical as Kurotsuchi Mayuri. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean to say that others, whether scientists or soldiers, tend to treat me well only when they stand to gain something from having earned my favor: a letter of recommendation, perhaps, or my expertise on an independent project. Or perhaps something as simple as weapon blueprints or my sword arm in combat. In your case, however…” Letting his words die out into a quiet, pensive hum, Kurotsuchi paused, stroking his fingertips along the edges of his false, golden beard. “I don’t have anything to offer you. Nothing I believe that you would value, anyway. If I may be perfectly candid, Zaraki… I don’t know what you want from me.”

“What makes you think I was trying to get anything out of you in the first place? I just… I wanted to do something nice for you, for once. That’s it.”

“I know,” Kurotsuchi admitted with a tentative softness, all of his suspicion, bleeding away to a somewhat reluctant acceptance. “That, however, is precisely what I find so difficult to comprehend about all of this.”

A strange sense of silence descended between them; it was neither awkward nor suffocating, neither demanding conversation nor drawing attention to the lack of it. Instead, sitting across from the man he loved, Zaraki was content to simply _be_. Reaching for the little pair of tongs by his side, Zaraki began transferring his own wagashi to Kurotsuchi’s plate. 

“So,” he began, stealing a tentative glance at his partner from across the table, “what do you think?”

When Kurotsuchi met his gaze, he quickly looked away, redirecting his focus towards the steady movements of Zaraki’s hands. 

“…About the tea?”

“About whether or not I impressed you,” Zaraki corrected, startlingly earnest.

Kurotsuchi cradled his cup in his hands, swiping his thumb along the edges, as he slowly pieced together responses to personal questions that he likely believed he’d never have to answer. 

“You’re going to sit here, saying nothing, for the entire night until I dignify that with a response, aren’t you?”

“Look at that: you’re as smart as everyone says you are.”

Kurotsuchi shook his head, disapproving – but when push came to shove, he answered.

“I suppose the truth of the matter is that that you have not exceeded my expectations so much as you have… overturned them, entirely. The years that I have spent with you, Zaraki, have been –”He silenced himself, suddenly, pressing his lips into a tight, thin line. “This is not what I expected, when I agreed to keep you company in the evenings,” Kurotsuchi redirected. “ _You_ are not what I expected. …I was wrong about you.” 

He looked up at him, then, audacious and brash, and he smiled. It was as cruel an expression as ever, all jagged edges and golden teeth, but there was a sincerity in that smile that contained all of the holiness, the wisdom, the patience, of the saint who shared the name of Kurotsuchi’s Zanpakutō. In its presence, Zaraki felt just as blessed.

“I’ve always hated that: being wrong,” Kurotsuchi continued with a quiet, almost sinister chuckle. “But I don’t mind admitting defeat, if it’s under these circumstances. As far as the surprises in my life tend to go, this count as one of the most pleasant. I can’t claim to enjoy the company, but shincha has always been a favorite of mine.”

“Only in spring, right?” Zaraki clarified, refusing to start an argument over that joke. “I thought you preferred gyokuro during the other months.”

Glancing up from his teacup, Kurotsuchi looked genuinely surprised by that statement. 

“And just how, dare I ask, did you ever come across that information? I don’t recall discussing that with you in the past.”

“You didn’t. I actually had to ask around the barracks to find that out,” Zaraki said, giving in to the pain in his ankles and breaking his posture, stretching out his legs. “Not that people had anything to say. I always figured us captains were a tight-knit group, but even the people who’d met you back when you were a third seat barely knew anything about you.”

“They know everything that’s pertinent.” Which was nothing at all, apparently. “I’m not the social sort. I’ve always preferred to keep my distance from the others. I was under the impression that nobody knew anything about my personal life, in the slightest. That is precisely what surprises me about the fact that you’ve managed to discover my preferences. I don’t know whom you could have possibly asked. The only logical options are Akon and…”

“I asked Nemuri,” Zaraki confessed, before Kurotsuchi could work himself into a temper by assuming that it was Urahara. He didn’t know what Kurotsuchi had against the poor bastard, but he knew that the mere mention of his name was enough to drag his mood through the mud. 

“That’s not possible,” he dismissed with a scoff. “Nemuri wouldn’t have revealed anything about me, even under duress. Or are you attempting to claim that she’s forgotten where her loyalties lie?”

“Don’t worry. I ain’t saying anything like that. Nemuri’s a good girl,” Zaraki reassured him. “Kept her mouth shut, just like you wanted her to. It was like talking to a brick wall. She wouldn’t tell me the first thing about you. The weird thing is, though, that she couldn’t keep her mouth shut when I asked her about herself. I noticed, back in the day, that you and Nemu always liked the same things. I figured this time around wouldn’t be any different. I don’t know how, but you and those girls are connected. If they like everything you do, I didn’t think it’d be too far of a stretch to say it’d be the same in reverse. That’s how I figured it out. I asked Nemuri what kind of tea she’d want if we ever had a party in Gotei 13, and she said she always liked gyokuro – but she’d want shincha in the spring.”

Kurotsuchi blinked back at him, expressionless, before a smile twisted at the corners of his lips. It was bold and unrepentant, crinkling the corners of his golden eyes. 

“That was… actually quite clever.” Following Zaraki’s lead, Kurotsuchi broke his formal posture. It was the first time that Zaraki had ever seen it. Despite his unconventional appearance, during ceremonies and formal meetings, Kurotsuchi always sat in perfect seiza. He never fidgeted like Hitsugaya. Never complained like Abarai. But at that moment, when they were alone, with no one else in the room but each other, Zaraki watched as Kurotsuchi slouched and tugs his legs out from under him. He looked so human, resting his arm on his folded knee as he leaned forward to sort through the little selection of mochi. “I never imagined that you would be able to see the connection. I must admit that I’m rather impressed.”

“That’s twice in one day. Must be my lucky night.”

Kurotsuchi shook his head. 

“Luck had nothing to do with it.” 

“Then it must’ve been my good detective work, right?” he shrugged, eager to fill in the blanks and eat up the praise. “Either way, I’m just glad I figured it out. I didn’t want to have to guess. You’re a hard guy to please. You know that?”

“Oh, but being sullen and difficult is part of my charm,” Kurotsuchi dismissed, in a move that would have been perceived as utterly charmless by anyone other than Zaraki. “Everyone loves a Byronic hero.”

“Pretty sure you’re just a straight-up villain,” he mumbled.

That little quip was meant as more of an insult that anything else, but Kurotsuchi had never before looked so please. The corners of his lips, twisting up into a strange, playful little smile. It took Zaraki a moment to realize that it was same one he wore when the makeup came off, and he was toying with him. _Flirting_. He was stunned by the sight, taken aback by the contrast of that coquettish grin on such a monstrous face, painted black and white. 

“Perhaps. And yet that doesn’t seem to have deterred you in the slightest.”

“No,” Zaraki agreed, honest and warm. “It hasn’t. You were right: it’s all just a part of your charm. Even if it was tough to get everything ready today, it was worth the effort. But I got to say I don’t get what’s so great about this stuff. You got some weird tastes, Kurotsuchi. The tea ain’t even all that good, and these little desserts are just beans and rice. I almost didn’t believe it when Nemuri said these things were her favorites.”

“I’m not particularly fond of sweets. Modern desserts tend to be repulsively saccharine, but I must admit that I’ve always enjoyed the classics. The scent of anko, in particular, strikes me as particularly… comforting. It’s rather nostalgic, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Nostalgic?” Zaraki practically sputtered, taken aback. “Don’t tell me eating this shit reminds you of being a kid or anything. That kind of sentimental talk’s not like you.” 

The sound of Kurotsuchi’s muted laughter, warm, and bright, and effervescent, set his heart racing at the very first tone. 

“Perhaps you’re right. …It isn’t,” he admitted, his smile, just a subtle crease against his stark, black paint. “It’s only the full moon talking, I’m sure – or perhaps I’m simply tired. Either way, I suppose that I should hold my tongue before I say something that I’ll regret. It wouldn’t do to besmirch my ruthless reputation, now would it? Not after all the time I spent crafting it so diligently.”

“Hey, I was just messing with you,” Zaraki disagreed with a shake of his head. There was a genuine fondness in his tone, a gentleness, that startled even Zaraki, himself, to hear it. He wasn’t sure whether he liked it or not: the fact that he’d changed, and the fact that Kurotsuchi had been the one who had changed him. “It ain’t like I was actually trying to shut you up. To be honest, Kurotsuchi, I want to hear all about it. I want to know what the world like when you were a kid. I want to know what _you_ were like.”

Kurotsuchi glanced up at him, then, seemingly startled by his sudden line of questioning. Almost as though he’d never expected Zaraki to take an interest. He didn’t say anything for the longest time; Zaraki never expected it of him. He’d half expected Kurotsuchi to shut him down and leave it at that – but when he next spoke, his tone was pensive and strangely sincere.

“There isn’t much to say. I was an ordinary boy.” 

“Bullshit. There ain’t nothing ‘ordinary’ about you,” Zaraki teased, smiling back at him. 

“Not now, but there was once a time in my life when I was relatively unremarkable,” Kurotsuchi retorted, cutting him short. “Though I’d always possessed some form of latent intelligence, as a child, I hadn’t felt pressured to apply that gift towards anything more meaningful than haiku and shogi. It was a simpler time in my life. _I_ was simpler,” Kurotsuchi repeated with a strange, unreadable expression that could have, on any other face, been perceived as something close to longing. “I was a large fish in a small pond. I never realized, at the time, that I was wasting my potential; I didn’t have the perspective to question it. Despite that fact, however… I must admit that I was content with my reality. Being a child, living in that village, brought with it an effortless happiness. I can still remember the feeling of it, the simple joy, the excitement, of exploring the flooded paddies. Wading, waist deep, through the water and running my hand along arabesque stalks of grain, in the cusp of summer. That’s not a feeling that I can replicate, now, knowing all that I do. Satisfaction doesn’t come quite so easily to me, anymore. In fact, the last time that I can remember ever being so content with my life, when I satisfied to simply _be_ , was when I…” 

His voice trailed off, and Kurotsuchi looked up at him with an odd expression, caught between sudden, pensive understanding and a strange, quiet solemnity. It morphed, slowly, into a look of pure _dread_ , that struck them both silent. Kurotsuchi didn’t finish his sentence, and Zaraki had a feeling that he never would, no matter how persistently he asked. 

Thousands of questions rushed through his mind, and yet Zaraki couldn’t muster the courage to ask a single one of them. The astringent taste of tea turned to cotton in his mouth, sucking the moisture from his tongue. With no warning at all, without a single word’s preamble, Kurotsuchi set down his cup and stood, steadying himself with his Zanpakutō, balanced against the tatami mats. 

“I should go,” he muttered, shaking his head, as though physically brushing off his own disgust – though what unsettled him so, Zaraki didn’t understand. As though by reflex, spurred by the fear of losing him, Zaraki lurched forward, just barely able to stop himself from clinging, desperately, onto Kurotsuchi’s sleeve.

“What’re you talking about? You don’t have to leave; you can stay as long as you want.”

“No. Nemuri will begin to worry, if I don’t return home soon.”

Zaraki couldn’t stop that sardonic, bitter scoff from escaping his lips. He’d done everything right, he’d followed all of the rules, and yet it seemed that, in the end, he still hadn’t figured out how to keep him. All the warmth had bled away from Kurotsuchi’s body: his posture, alert and rigid, his tone, as dismissive as always. 

“Using your kid as an excuse to leave, huh?” Zaraki quipped back, as he leaned against the wall. “That’s the oldest trick in the book. And a bad one, in your case. What’s Nemuri got to be worried about, anyway?” he continued, refusing to let go of the matter. “You’re the Captain of the Twelfth. No street thug’s ever going to be stupid enough to pick a fight with you.”

They’d take one look at his painted face, at his monstrous silhouette and that twisted grimace, and run for the hills.

He’d half-expected an argument to spark right then and there: Kurotsuchi, packing up his belongings and storming out the door. He’d expected sarcasm and bitterness – but never sincerity.

“It doesn’t matter how powerful I become: Nemuri will never stop worrying about me. Her predecessor certainly didn’t.” he said to him, suddenly, looking back at him over the puffed veil of his purple scarf. “During my late nights in the laboratory, Nemu, waiting for me at home, never allowed herself to retire for the evening until I walked through that door. Even after her passing, her successor continues her vigil. Nemuri Hachigou shares none of her memories, and yet somehow, she has developed a similar belief that she has a duty to look after me.”

“You… really don’t want her to worry. Do you?” Zaraki repeated, more for himself than Kurotsuchi.

“No, I don’t.”

It was an odd and thoughtful sentiment, endearingly paternal, that soothed all of Zaraki’s bristling irritation.

“Well, you think it’d help her relax a little if she knew that you were here with me?” he asked, his tone, lightly hopeful. “I can tell her that I’ll look after you when she’s not around.”

“You shouldn’t make promises that you don’t intend to keep – even in jest.” 

Scolding him like a child, Kurotsuchi didn’t sound quite so impressed with him, then. As dismissively as ever, he left him behind, stalking towards the exit. His hand was already reaching for the doorknob, when Zaraki interjected, refusing to give in.

“Who says I’m joking?” he asked. He hadn’t intended to sound as loud, as insistent as he did, but he refused to back down. “Maybe you don’t need anyone to protect you, but I’ll stand in your corner, whether you want it or not.”

Kurotsuchi didn’t even dignify that with a response. He never did, always leaving him behind without so much as a parting kiss or a last farewell. Zaraki didn’t know why he’d expected, against all odds, for that night to have been any different. He watched in silence as Kurotsuchi’s fingers curled around the doorknob and forced it open. Without so much as a moment’s hesitation, he was gone within an instant, his white haori, melding into the veil of cool, spring fog. 

“…Goodnight, Zaraki.” 

Those parting words, just barely whispered, echoed like a deafening howl, accompanied by the sound of the slamming door and the rush of blood between Zaraki’s ears.


	5. Chapter 5

“Checkmate.” The winning tile came crashing down. “That’s another loss for the record books, Zaraki. How embarrassing.”

Embarrassing, indeed. Twenty-four consecutive losses, with not a single victory to break up the monotony. He’d never even come close. Releasing a pent-up sigh of frustration, Zaraki leaned back, letting his palms come to rest against the worn tatami mats. He’d always hated losing, even in something as insignificant as shogi, but, if he had no choice but to be honest with himself, Zaraki didn’t mind being the victim of Kurotsuchi’s curb-stomp slaughter when the man looked so hopelessly pleased with himself after every single victory. There was something charming about his shameless enthusiasm, something beautiful about the light in his eyes and his competitive spirit, his barely constrained excitement, bursting at the seams, every time he swiped another tile off the board. Zaraki wanted to listen to Kurotsuchi’s laughter, bold and bright, for just a little while longer – even if it was directed at him, more often than not. 

“Yeah, rub it in.”

“You’re too aggressive,” Kurotsuchi taunted, doing just that. “Even a novice knows to use the opening phase of the game to bolster their defenses. Instead, you rush in blindly and leave yourself open to a counterattack, every single time.”

“Hey, that plan’s always worked for me before,” Zaraki shrugged. “It wins my battles, anyway.”

“It won’t win wars,” he countered. “You think like a soldier, Zaraki, with nothing but your own life and honor to lose. In shogi, however, you must place yourself in the role of the general. When you lead with a direct frontal assault that any novice tactician could predict, it’s hardly any surprise when I manage to peel away at your defenses, one piece at a time.” Pulling open the worn, leather bag of his antique shogi set, Kurotsuchi began gathering up the discarded pieces. When he reached for Zaraki’s king, however, he hesitated, his painted fingernail, tapping at the character printed on the tile. His gaze turned upwards, sly and bright. Curious. “I’ve noticed something odd, however. Careless as you tend to be throughout the opening phase, when you finally come to your senses and realize that I’ve cornered you, you quickly lose momentum and end up waffling about at the edge of the board, moving your tiles between the same set of spaces… almost as though you can’t decide whether to retreat or push forward. That’s a fatal error, you know. It is precisely during turning points like those, when you risk losing everything, that a man cannot afford to hesitate,” he scolded, shaking his head. “As a captain, you should know that well enough, already.”

“I do,” he insisted with a soft, uncertain chuckle, weakly defending himself, “but all the lessons I learned over the years go flying out the window when we’re playing together. You got one hell of a game face, you know that? It’s… intimidating. Can’t think straight when I’m with you.”

“You can’t think straight, regardless of the circumstances. Don’t start blaming me for your own inadequacies,” Kurotsuchi countered, his laughter, loud and shameless. It emboldened him. When Kurotsuchi stood to file the shogi box away in its little corner of the shelf, Zaraki trailed after him, smiling like a fool. 

“Packing up already? Don’t you want to play another game? Don’t tell me you’re already sick of stomping me into the dirt.” 

“Nonsense. I’ll never get tired of putting you in your place,” Kurotsuchi insisted. Perhaps it was only a trick of the moonlight, but that twist to Kurotsuchi’s smile, lopsided and playful, could have almost been mistaken for genuine fondness. When his finger tapped gently against Zaraki’s chest, it struck him like a bullet through the heart. He could feel the warmth bleeding from that pinpoint like an open wound. “Somebody has to keep your ego in check. As much as I would like to crush you all over again, however, I fear that it is time for me to go. I shouldn’t stay any longer.”

“You want to leave now? Are you kidding me? Look out the window. It’s pouring. Why don’t you stay the night? At least wait until morning for the weather to clear up. Don’t you know you’ll catch a cold if you walk back in the rain?” Zaraki warned, metaphorically clinging to Kurotsuchi’s ankles, getting down on his knees and begging him to stay. 

“That’s just an old wives’ tale, you dolt,” Kurotsuchi dismissed, practically hissing with disgust, almost as though Zaraki had personally offended him by even suggesting such an asinine notion. He’d never taken offense, in the past, when Zaraki had insulted his honor, and his mother, and his daughters, but gods forbid anybody challenge his precious science. “The common cold is caused by a viral infection. It’s not a condition that the body develops spontaneously due to nothing more than simple exposure to cold and moisture. That’s just ridiculous. It’s _silly_ ,” he grumbled, strangely petulant. “Regardless, I have a cure for the common cold, already. I can risk a bit of carelessness, knowing that,” he continued with a casual shrug, playing off that glowing achievement as nothing of merit. Perhaps that was the nature of brilliance, however. Even miracles were mundane to a man as bright as Kurotsuchi. 

“You found a cure for the cold?” Zaraki sputtered. “Haven’t people been trying to figure that out for thousands of years? Why haven’t you started selling it yet? You could start your own noble house with all the money you’d make off that thing.”

“It’s… still in its preliminary stages,” Kurotsuchi admitted, steepling his fingers as he quickly backtracked from his bragging. “It hasn’t passed the clinical trials. It’s effective enough, but the side effect profile ranges from limb loss, to bleeding gums, to blindness, but in the name of science – and in making a prompt escape from this filthy hovel – those are risks that I am more than willing to take.” 

“Spending the night with me is so bad, you’d rather go blind?” Zaraki asked, all awkward laughter, as he rubbed at the back of his neck. 

“It’s nothing that I wouldn’t be able to reverse,” Kurotsuchi quipped, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “In comparison, however, the memories of sleeping in this pigsty would haunt me for the rest of my life. Unlike with my stay in the _other_ nest of maggots, I wouldn’t even have a line of prisoners out the door to distract me from the boredom and the melancholy.”

“That’s hilarious, Kurotsuchi. Maybe it’s time for you to hang up your lab coat and go into comedy.”

Even if he never laughed at Kurotsuchi’s jokes – or, rather, his biting, cynical commentary – he couldn’t deny that he loved that off-brand sense of humor, all the same. He loved it for the joy that it imparted upon him. He loved the wrinkles that formed in the corners of Kurotsuchi’s eyes when he’d laugh himself breathless. He loved his confidence, the way he’d tilt his chin up, sticking his nose in the air, as though the world and all its people were so far below him that he couldn’t even be bothered to look. Kurotsuchi always had a raging superiority complex, but it was rarely if ever so charming as when he was in good humor. Zaraki didn’t mind being Kurotsuchi’s punchline, if it could keep him laughing, always. 

“You’d be the only one who’d ever come to my shows. I doubt that anyone else could ever stand the criticism.”

“It’s an acquired taste.”

Kurotsuchi glanced up at him, then, his expression, softening – as though he understood what Zaraki was trying to tell him, and he was going to turn around, and stay, and make up the time for all those lonely nights. Instead, Kurotsuchi took a deep breath and turned away, reaching for his umbrella in the corner of the room. It was a strange, metallic device, an original invention, that repelled everything from rainwater to cero blasts. Just as untouchable as its owner. 

“One that’s best in moderation, I’m sure. You wouldn’t want to overindulge.”

Undeterred by superstition, Kurotsuchi popped open his umbrella indoors and let it come to rest upon his shoulder. He gave him a slight nod and turned towards the door, ready to abandon his role as the better half of a couple to resume his life as an eternal bachelor. For the first time, however, instead of falling back and letting him go, Zaraki refused to be cowed to inaction. 

After all, Kurotsuchi was right: when he’d come so close, at the most critical moment when he had everything to lose, he couldn’t afford to hesitate. 

Sucking in a sharp breath, he willed his bones to move against fear, and shame, and unconquerable inertia. Step by step, he followed after him. Kurotsuchi put on his sandals and reached for the door, and he was still so far behind.

“Goodnight, Zaraki.”

Just as Kurotsuchi’s fingers curled around the doorknob, Zaraki finally broke through his fetters. His body moved by its own will, his hand, shooting out as if by reflex. It gripped onto Kurotsuchi’s wrist, his fingers, clenching down and holding him tight like a lifeline. 

“Wait,” he pleaded, hating the desperation in his voice. All the same, however, he accepted its sincerity, finally coming to terms with his own desires. 

“What are you doing?” Kurotsuchi asked, refusing to let go of the door. 

“Just listen to me. Look, I wasn’t actually asking you to stay because of the rain. Alright? That was just an excuse. A bad one. The truth is –” He swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. Every word, forced from his belly, tore through his throat like glass. “I just want you to stay with me. It kills me to see you walk out that door every night. Did you know that?”

Kurotsuchi stared back at him, his eyes, blown wide. For what felt like ages – or perhaps it was only a fleeting moment – neither of them said a single word.

“It _kills_ me,” Zaraki repeated, his voice, cracking. He shook like a leaf, his hand, trembling. “Every single time. To be honest, I don’t know how you feel about me. It’s so damn hard to know what you’re thinking, but if you ever gave a damn about me at all, if I ever meant anything to you, _anything_ , even for a second, then for once, just stay. Stay here and let me be with you, just a little bit longer.” Loosening his grip, Zaraki took a chance and cradled Kurotsuchi’s bruised wrist in his palm. He swiped his thumb over the bone and allowed his hand to drift, gently stroking against his knuckles. “Let’s spend one night together, and we won’t ever have to do this again. Once will be enough to last me for the rest of my life. Just leave me with the memory, and I’ll put this to rest and be done with it.”

Even Kurotsuchi’s laughter, at that moment, would have been better than the silence. It would have been better the shock and the horror in his golden eyes. Zaraki felt like an absolute, goddamn fool. Like the biggest ass in all of Seireitei. 

But then it happened. 

Kurotsuchi closed his eyes and turned away. One by one, his fingers slipped away from the doorknob, until his hand was held, softly, in Zaraki’s own. With a press of a button, he collapsed his umbrella and tossed it to the corner of the room. 

“This is ridiculous,” he muttered, so close to shame. It twisted at his heart, it pained him to admit it, but Zaraki understood. 

They were men. They had roles to play and expectations to fulfill. 

Being a man meant shedding off the shell of puerile vulnerability. It meant having no weaknesses. Inexhaustible, always shrugging off the pain and hiding the scars. It fell to men to protect their pride. To disguise all their softer feelings and bury their vulnerabilities, never to be seen again, except, perhaps, when manifested as temporary, explosive outrage once their barriers were broken.

He knew it all too well.

“No,” he insisted. “There’s nothing ridiculous about it.”

There was no shame in loving another man. No shame, that is, that would have been greater than condemning themselves to loneliness out of a simple fear of being happy. For the sake of the gods, for _their_ sake, Zaraki wanted to overcome that shame and rise to the occasion.

Kurotsuchi didn’t say anything. His expression, deceptively neutral, never wavered as he stared wordlessly down at the floor. He was too terrified to look at him. He didn’t have to say it for Zaraki to know. Even if Kurotsuchi would never admit it, Zaraki could sense that, beneath that veil of cold, indifferent dignity, he was deathly, intimately afraid. Beneath his fingertips, Kurotsuchi’s heartbeat thundered as though he were in the midst of combat.

Perhaps, in a way, he actually was. 

Surely, they both knew they’d crossed a line. There was no going back after something like that. Even if they chose to run away, now, and ignore everything that had transpired between them for the rest of their lives, even if they kept their dirty secret to themselves, kept it bottled up inside, along with the memories of two dead daughters, of prison and poverty, of coltish inexperience and crippling defeat, the ghosts wouldn’t disappear quite so easily. 

Gods knew they never did. 

In spite of all his hardships, however, in all aspects of his life, Kurotsuchi was bold. He lived that life on his own terms, speaking his mind and shrugging off the criticism, when he knew full well that, regardless of the threats, even Yamamoto, at his strongest, wouldn’t touch him. He was too valuable an asset, too powerful a weapon, to be discarded to the wayside quite so carelessly. He still had so much potential and so much more to give. Knowing he was invincible, Kurotsuchi had become a man with no fears to conquer and no men who could conquer him – 

But the moment that Zaraki reached for his cheek, he _flinched_. His breath hitched in his chest, and he screwed his eyes shut, shuddering as Zaraki stroked his windburned palm against his jaw. Kurotsuchi was coming apart at the seams. Trembling. Terrified. 

There was a man who had cut off the very hand of god, and he was brought to heel by nothing more than a gentle touch. 

The pristine, sharp lines of Kurotsuchi’s makeup, sturdy like armor, had withstood acid, mud, and bloodshed – but it smeared, malleable, beneath Zaraki’s fingertips. He ran his thumb against Kurotsuchi’s cheek, stroking, soft, against the bone. Blurring all his lines. Kurotsuchi’s eyes cracked open, bright slits of glimmering gold against a backdrop of black and white. Zaraki lifted his face in his upturned palm, and he lowered his head.

Kurotsuchi’s lips brushed against his own in a ghost of a touch, soft a whisper. It lasted only a moment, just barely there, but even that fleeting warmth sent a jolt through his heart, stunning and lethal. He pulled away to catch his breath and saw the faded smear of paint on Kurotsuchi’s lips. And he knew, then, that he had broken him with only half a kiss. Wretched longing twisted his tendons, sunk its hooks into his flesh and tore apart his bones. Zaraki flicked his tongue over his lips, tasted charcoal, and kissed him once again, in earnest.

Never had he longed for anything so dearly. Not like that, and never with such overflowing adoration. 

He wove his fingers into Kurotsuchi’s hair, shaved short in the summertime. He stroked his thumb along the edge of his mohawk and traced his fingers down his spine, letting his hand settle upon his lower back as he pulled him close, chest to chest. He never wanted to let him go. He could feel the tangle of Kurotsuchi’s fingers in the folds of his yukata, and the man shuddered in his arms. 

For a moment, he’d believed that Kurotsuchi would undress him, but at the very last moment, he pushed him away, his hands, his arms, every part of him, visibly shaking. He sucked in deep, desperate breaths that wreaked havoc through his bony frame. 

“That’s enough,” Kurotsuchi stammered through clenched teeth. Moonlight reflected off the glistening tears, pooling against his golden irises. They looked so heavy, and yet Zaraki knew they wouldn’t fall. 

Kurotsuchi wouldn’t let them.

He never did. It was the same way he’d looked on the day that Nemu passed: overwhelmed, and helpless, and determined to rein it all back in spite of it. Just barely holding himself together through the earthquakes and the thunderstorms. 

“I’m sorry,” Zaraki whispered, breathless. “I didn’t mean to –” 

“No.” Kurotsuchi cut him off, silencing him with nothing more than a single word. He coughed into his fist, clearing his voice, before he took a moment to straighten his hair and readjust his hat, though he looked positively ravaged all the same. He _sounded_ ravaged, his voice, trembling. “If there is any blame to be assigned, it lies with me. You made your intentions perfectly clear. I knew what you intended to do from the very start; I was the one who ultimately decided not to put a stop to it. That was my decision and my responsibility.”

“Maybe. Doesn’t change the fact that, either way, you didn’t like it. I can still be sorry for making you go through with something you regret,” Zaraki mumbled. He could feel his feet sliding away, turning towards the living room. He wanted to make his escape: to shrink down to a fourth of his size and slip beneath the sofa. Anything to escape.

“You’re wrong. I don’t regret a thing.” Despite that bold declaration, Kurotsuchi looked just as timid, his head, bowed. He clung to the rim of his hat, almost as though he were trying to hide beneath the shade. “Not in the true essence of the word. What you must understand, however, is that for as long as I have lived, I had never once considered the possibility that I would find myself doing anything at all like… _this_.” 

“You mean… like kissing someone?”

“Being intimate at all, in the slightest,” he clarified. “This is unfamiliar territory for me. I don’t… I am not meant to engage in acts such as this. It simply isn’t done.”

“Says who?” Zaraki challenged, taking a bold step forward. Putting on his bravest smile, he jostled his shoulder: a comforting display of familiar antagonism that managed, somehow to put him at ease. “You’re Kurotsuchi-fucking-Mayuri. You can do whatever the hell you want.”

“When it comes to academic pursuits and combat affairs, perhaps,” he deflected, giving off a nervous chuckle that lacked his characteristic confidence. “But in terms of… softer matters, things like this, I fear that I’m not nearly as courageous as you seem to presume. Growing close to another person, at times preferring their company to my own solitude – that was never supposed to happen to me. I never so much as considered the possibility of it: what I would do if it occurred or what I would want for the future.”

“I get you,” Zaraki was quick to agree. “I didn’t think I’d ever be doing sappy shit like this, either. I’ve had a couple partners over the years, but I never let it get this far, before. Never wanted it to. I figured I’d be living alone for the rest of my life, and, honestly, I was happy with that, in my own way. But this, being with you… it’s a nice change of pace. I’m fine with scrapping my plans and starting my life all over again, if it means that I’ll be doing it with you.”

“Going through so much trouble for a man you hate?” Kurotsuchi scoffed. Zaraki suspected he was laughing just to suffocate the silence. “Now, that’s a ridiculous notion if I ever heard one.”

“Is it? Yeah, there are times when I really _fucking_ hate you, but I’ll always love you more than that. I’ll never stop loving you. Not for a second. Even when we’re clawing at each other’s throats. We don’t have to change: I can go on thinking you’re a mean, nasty little bastard, and you can go on thinking I’m a ‘troglodyte,’ whatever the hell that is. We’ll still go home together at the end of it all. Just because we argue doesn’t mean that we don’t care about each other.”

“That’s rather presumptuous, to assume that I had ever cared for you in the slightest.” 

“Don’t you?” Zaraki asked, tilting his head with a joyous, playful smile. “I think that if you really didn’t give a damn, you wouldn’t bother to fight with me at all. You’d do that thing you do to Kotetsu and Ishida, where you tune them out and walk right past them like they don’t exist, even when they’re talking to you and calling your name. Like it ain’t even worth your time to stop and listen. I think… that the opposite of loving someone isn’t hating them – I think it’s not caring one way or another. You don’t ignore me, anymore. You haven’t done that in a long time. I think that has to mean something.”

Kurotsuchi’s expression shifted from annoyance to thinly veiled surprise.

“That’s a rather perceptive observation. Was it Nemuri who told you that, as well?”

“No, I figured that one out on my own. C’mon, give me some credit. You and me – we’re lovers,” he shrugged. “You’re hard to read sometimes, but I know you.” 

For the longest time, Kurotsuchi didn’t say anything at all. He only looked up at him, carefully studying his face, before he swiftly turned away and started taking off his shoes. His hat came off next, hung onto the little rack that Zaraki had purchased and mounted on his wall, just for him. 

“Very well. You’ve convinced me. I’ll stay,” he said, suddenly, with a kind of playful resignation reserved, previously, only for Nemuri. It was the same voice he used when he’d relent to her ceaseless begging and promise to bring her back biscuits or tea from the captain’s meetings. Zaraki assumed that she was the one he was messaging from that little device in his pocket – making up excuses as to why he couldn’t go home. “Don’t expect me to entertain you all evening, however. I still have reports to finish.”

“Ain’t those due tomorrow?” Zaraki asked, taking a seat across from him at the tea table, when Kurotsuchi sprawled himself over the cushions. “I gave up on finishing those weeks ago, but you? You’re a workaholic. You never leave things until the last minute. What’s gotten into you?”

“I’ve been procrastinating on my reports for ages, now. I have no choice,” Kurotsuchi admitted with an insincere sigh, feigning annoyance. “The time that I once dedicated to bookwork, I now spend here, faffing about with you and making a fool of myself in the process.”

As Kurotsuchi started writing up his draft for the morning report, Zaraki watched his handiwork – each and every character, perfectly printed. He had meticulous handwriting, just sharp and bold as he was, himself.

“You’ve been putting off your work for me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kurotsuchi dismissed, cutting his ego back down to size. “You’re hardly worth the effort. I only come here for the sex and the shogi.”

Zaraki burst into laughter, warm and bright. 

“You’re an ass.”

In a childishly playful display of vengeance, he stuck out his leg and kicked him under the table.


	6. Chapter 6

Never had Zaraki ever seen so many bottles and compacts. Row after row, a thousand shades of black and white, all, of course, save for a vial of mascara and a single, scandalous tube of crimson lipstick. The mere sight of it, the unmentionable memory of their more unorthodox nights, sent a trembling jolt of longing down Zaraki’s spine – or perhaps it was only the scent of Kurotsuchi’s perfume that allured him. Cyprinum in crystal vials, hot, and sweet, and gooey. They sat upon his windowsill, the bottles, shining a brilliant shade of gold, warmer than honey and brighter than the sun. Once ushered into a hole beneath his floorboards, Kurotsuchi’s cosmetics were now allowed to see the light of day. They littered every surface of Zaraki’s bathroom. He couldn’t so much as swing his arms without knocking against one piece of glassware or another. 

Despite the mess, Zaraki knew better than to move any of Kurotsuchi’s belongings. There was a method to his mayhem, with every item in its rightful place. Kurotsuchi spent an hour in the bathroom every morning just to doll himself up; Zaraki didn’t want to make it any more time consuming. Kurotsuchi was already rushed as it was, walking out the door before sunrise, every morning, without turning to him with so much as an “I love you.” 

Perhaps they were undignified, those little displays of casual affection, but Zaraki made a point to say them often. It was the last thing he said to him every evening, whether Kurotsuchi spent the night or if chose to leave. As his lover liked to say, after all, Death came for everyone. It was only a matter of when. But if any day could be their last, when push came to shove, Zaraki didn’t want to risk another round of regrets. If he was destined to stand over Kurotsuchi’s grave, someday, he didn’t want his last thoughts of him to be the same as those that he had felt towards Yachiru, all those years ago.

He loved her dearly – but did she know? Did he say it enough, and did it really sink in? 

He wanted to make sure that at the end of the world, Kurotsuchi wouldn’t have any doubt of it. Even if he never said it back, Zaraki didn’t mind being met with his apathy. Sappy soap opera antics were better left to other, more traditional couples, anyway. He didn’t need public displays of affection. 

It was enough for Kurotsuchi to simply be there. 

Enough to have the privilege of watching him, barefaced, dressed in nothing but his yukata, as he slinked beneath the kotatsu in the wintertime. It was enough to feel him curl up beside him at night – even if Kurotsuchi hogged the blankets and shoved him, hard, towards the corner of the mattress. Frigid, bare feet against his back. It was enough for Zaraki to sit around the dinner table with Kurotsuchi at his side – and with a little girl across from him who shared all of her father’s strangest mannerisms, peeling apart her fish like a specimen on her lab bench. 

He never thought that anyone would ever call him Ken-chan again.

It was a wonderful feeling. Zaraki had to remember to be grateful for the little things in life. Even if Kurotsuchi still wasn’t a good man, even after all those years, he was good for Zaraki.

Carefully navigating through his bathroom, Zaraki stepped into the shower and shivered in anticipation as the water hissed and stuttered, until the pressure built up, and a frigid stream fell against him in earnest. He was used to it, by then. He didn’t even flinch. In the middle of his shower, Zaraki reached for his shampoo and realized that Kurotsuchi had used the last of it the evening prior and left the empty bottle to rot on the rack, just like he always did. As meticulously organized as Kurotsuchi often seemed, he was surprisingly sloppy when it came to his home life. Leaving dirty dishes on the table and drinking straight out of the juice cartons. 

Silently cursing Kurotsuchi’s name, Zaraki lathered up a bar of overpriced, luxury soap and ran his fingers through his hair. Even during his absence, Kurotsuchi always found a way to crawl under his skin. 

_______________________________________

“You’re late,” Kurotsuchi scolded, as Zaraki stumbled through the double doors of the Captain’s meeting hall. They were in the middle of a break, at the very least, allowing Zaraki to slip into the room as inconspicuously as a mountain of a man ever could. 

“Shut it,” Zaraki grumbled as he dragged out his chair. It screeched against the polished wooden floor, legs skittering from the friction. He was far too tired to pay the damage any heed. With a rumbling, tired sigh, Zaraki sank into his seat and slumped against the table. “I had a rough morning,” he continued, slowly turning his head to glance at the man, sitting impassively by his side. Zaraki’s single eye narrowed, his bloodshot gaze, silently judgmental. “You won’t believe it. I woke up on the floor, almost like someone pushed out of my own bed. Then when I went to make a cup of coffee this morning, I found out that someone threw out all my instant stuff and replaced it with that fucking whole bean shit. I wonder who that could’ve been.”

“Consider it divine intervention,” Kurotsuchi replied, smiling back at him, mockingly serene. He wasn’t far off – even if he wasn’t a proper god, he was as close as men came. A giver and a taker of life, all on a whim. “You’ve been drinking that powdered swill for far too long. Somebody needed to introduce a little taste of civility to your harsh, uncultured wilderness. If that somebody needs to be me, bold pioneer that I am, then so be it. There’s no need to worry, however. I assure you: I have a very discerning palate. Though I’ve always preferred tea to coffee, I know a good blend when I taste it. I’ve stocked your pantry with the best of the best. One taste, and I am certain that you realize what a fool you’ve been, sipping at mud all this time.”

“Like hell I will. I ain’t drinking that garbage. I don’t have time to stand around and grind up beans, Kurotsuchi.”

“Now, now. No excuses,” he reprimanded, tutting at him as though he were a child. “If you set your alarm clock only one hour earlier, you’d have the time to prepare your coffee and to do so much more.”

“No, I can’t. I just can’t. I’m too damn tired in the mornings. Honestly, Kurotsuchi, I don’t know how you do it – staying up all night and leaving for work before the sun comes up.”

“It’s a little something called discipline. One of us has to have it.”

“It ain’t that I don’t got discipline – I just didn’t start off the morning right. If I don’t have my coffee, I’m out of it for the rest of the day.”

“You’re always ‘out of it,’” Kurotsuchi remarked, his tone, as scathing as ever. With a quiet exhale and a subtle roll of his golden eyes, he reached for the shared, Captain’s teapot and poured him a cup. “Here,” Kurotsuchi grumbled, sliding a little porcelain teacup over to Zaraki’s side of the table. “The quality of the leaves is rather poor, but it should keep you afloat for the time being, all the same.”

Even after getting dragged to proper teahouses and boring tastings that lasted for hours, Zaraki still couldn’t tell the difference between gourmet leaves and cheap, bagged swill. It was all just boiled grass to him. He was so tired, however, that the mere mention of caffeine was enough to spark his interest. Feeling like the undead, slow and weak, Zaraki wrapped his fingers around the cup – before he drew back, wincing, tea, splattering over his hand. 

“Damn, that’s hot!”

In a startlingly understated response to his outburst, Kurotsuchi towards him with a disappointed glare that would have turned a lesser man’s bones to jelly. It was the same kind of glare that sent Nemuri and Akon scurrying away into the farthest recesses of the lab. The same glare that sent pure, unbridled fear, jolting through his enemies. Instead of running, however, Zaraki met his gaze, holding it. 

“That’s a rather strange look in your eye. What do you want?” Kurotsuchi asked in dull, anticipatory monotone. 

“You, uh… got your first aid kit on you?” 

It was a rhetorical question: Kurotsuchi always did. Even if the man’s focus was primarily on weapons research, he was still a medical doctor by training. He could patch up wounds just as well as any member of the Fourth – not that he was particularly enthusiastic about lending a helping hand to anyone. Kurotsuchi played the role of a healer only ever in emergencies, bitching and moaning about the degradation of it all, the entire time. Saving lives and easing pain: what a waste of his time and his brilliance. It was probably less of a coincidence and more of a concerted effort that, even if most of his patients survived, Kurotsuchi’s needlework was always too aggressive, his anesthetic, non-existent. Even at his best, he was more of a butcher than a proper nurse. 

“Ask Kotetsu,” Kurotsuchi grumbled, pushing aside Zaraki’s concerns. 

“I could, but I’m asking _you_ ,” Zaraki snapped back, far more insistently, far more loudly, than he’d intended. 

For a moment, their eyes met, and they stared at each other in heavy, lingering silence. Neither of them moved a muscle, as though the first to so much as twitch would be the first to give in. From the corner of his eye, Zaraki could see the other captains across the table, slowly turning to look at them. Surely, Kurotsuchi must have noticed, as well, for him to surrender as quickly as he did.

“Here,” he hissed, digging out his first aid kit and tossing it over to him. Startled by the sudden movement, Zaraki just barely caught it. 

He turned the metal lockbox in his hands. It was small and compact: far heavier than it looked. Though he’d never seen its contents, he knew, from Kurotsuchi’s testimony, that it wasn’t like the standardized kits from the Fourth, filled with bandages and antiseptic. Kurotsuchi’s idea of “first aid” was a set of thirty-odd syringes filled with potent medications that ranged from tissue growth factors to heavy tranquilizers, potent enough to take out a hollow. He stocked the standard items as well, certainly, but those were crammed into the back along with everything else that he never planned on using. 

“Hold up… it’s locked,” Zaraki commented, as he tugged at the handle.

“The code is my date of birth.”

That was as good as impenetrable, to most, but when Zaraki punched in the numbers, the lockbox popped right open. Even so, he didn’t so much as attempt to its contents. 

“Is something wrong?” Kurotsuchi asked, his tone, completely unconcerned – more irritated than anything else. “The bandages are in the back.”

“Yeah, I know, but the thing is, I was hoping you’d take a look and –”

“And what?” Kurotsuchi asked him, deadpan. “Were you hoping that I could clean and bandage your wounds as though I were your _father_?”

“Maybe,” Zaraki shrugged, absolutely shameless. “I know you don’t got a nurturing bone in your body –” Hell, not even for his daughter. When Nemuri would trip and scrape her knees, all Kurotsuchi ever did was stand at a distance, berating her for her carelessness, as she’d kneel on the floor and cry. “But it’d be nice to get to lean on you for a bit. You didn’t soak your dishes last night, by the way,” he added, going for the guilt trip. “It took me over an hour to scrape the sauce off of those.”

From the corner of his eye, he could see Kurotsuchi strangling the life out of his pen, surely imagining Zaraki’s neck beneath his fingers instead of bits of metal and plastic. His painted, white knuckles turned even paler from the pressure. Just a little bit more, and the poor thing would snap beneath his grip. 

With an audible growl, Kurotsuchi threw his fountain pen onto the table and snatched Zaraki wrist, forcibly tugging it closer. Reaching for his first aid kit, he pushed aside all of his precious syringes to reach, instead, for the “trash” in the back: a little tube of antibiotic ointment and a roll of fresh, white gauze.

As he was bandaging him up, they made eye contact, silent and suffocating. It was a bizarre moment, almost surreal in its absurdity. He’d seen Kurotsuchi get dismembered on the battlefield, he’d seen him scarred and horrifically burned – and fucked raw and bloody on the floor beneath him – and yet, in all their history, Zaraki had never seen such visible agony carved onto his face as he did, right then and there. 

Kurotsuchi’s steady, surgeon’s hands were _shaking_.

“I won’t forget this indignity,” he hissed, his quiet voice, just barely escaping behind clenched teeth. 

“I won’t either,” Zaraki replied, gently wrapping his bandaged fingers around his partner’s hand. “Thanks, Kurotsuchi.”

It was almost as though he couldn’t shove him away any faster, batting his hand to the side as though Zaraki were infected with the plague. Though Kurotsuchi risked smearing his precious makeup, resting elbow on the table, he buried his face in his palm and sank down into his chair, silently stewing in his shame. 

“You spend so much time homebrewing bombs, I almost forgot you’re a real doctor,” Zaraki commented, bolding reaching over to slap his hand over Kurotsuchi’s shoulder. “You did a good job. It’s all better.”

Kurotsuchi positively _grimaced_.

“How insulting. I don’t require your validation.”

“I know. It ain’t like you’re the humble type. Still, I figured I should say it.” 

Even if Kurotsuchi knew that he was brilliant, however, Zaraki couldn’t help but think that, perhaps, it could still do him some good to hear it from someone else, once in a while. Kurotsuchi was far too often criticized – and even if that criticism was fair and warranted, it certainly wasn’t balanced. Nobody in Gotei 13 ever gave him credit for anything, even when he saved their asses time and again. Even when everybody relied on his technology, his communicators and his gigai, no one ever threw a “thank you” or a “good work” his way. Not that Kurotsuchi was expecting it, and not that he would have appreciated any commentary from the peanut gallery, positive or not. Even so, Zaraki felt that Kurotsuchi deserved a little more praise than he got. He was biased. 

Wanting to comfort him, at least somewhat, Zaraki pulled a little thermos from his pouch and set it down by Kurotsuchi’s notebook. 

“What’s this?” his partner asked, tapping at it with his painted nail.

“You always complain about the tea we have in meetings, so I figured I’d start bringing you some of the good stuff from home.”

“How did you find the time to make this? I though you claimed that you were running late this morning,” Kurotsuchi said, wrapping his hands around the thermos. 

“I was. But just because I don’t got time to grind up beans for myself doesn’t mean I don’t got time for you.”

“You shouldn’t say such things aloud, Zaraki. You’ll make a fool of us, both,” Kurotsuchi complained. Beneath all those layers of makeup, however, Zaraki could see him smile – just a little twitch at the corners of his painted lips. 

“Can’t help it. I make a fool of myself no matter what I do. Weren’t you the one who said that?”

“It doesn’t mean that you have to go out of your way to prove my point.”

Despite all of his whining, Kurotsuchi took the gift, no questions asked; he unscrewed the lid and went right back to his paperwork without another word. Though Zaraki wanted nothing more than to bicker with him just a little while longer, he decided against continuing to pester him. Kurotsuchi was a viper, after all. He could only handle so much socialization before he’d feel the intrinsic need to return to his burrow. 

He didn’t want to pressure him.

Instead, resting his jaw against his palm, Zaraki glanced around the room at the dusty scrolls on the wall and the potted flowers, dotting the table, as he waited for the allotted break time to come to a close. Around him, the other captains focused on their paperwork or held little conversations with each other that were, without a doubt, more pleasant than the ones he shared with Kurotsuchi. Strangely, however, he noticed that, instead of talking with her brother or Kotetsu, as she normally did, Rukia was taking tentative little glances at _him_.

“What? Do I got something on my face?” he asked, startling her.

“No. It’s nothing,” she replied after regaining her composure. “I just find it a little strange that you and Kurotsuchi-san still refer to each other by your surnames, after all this time. Isn’t the wedding coming up soon?”

Calling it a wedding was little bit much: it was a thirty-minute appointment to stand over a podium and sign a set of forms. Perhaps it wasn’t glamorous, but the arrangement worked out well enough. Zaraki didn’t particularly care for the niceties of a formal wedding, and Kurotsuchi wasn’t interested, at all, in the parties and well wishes. Even if they’d gone through the trouble of hosting a proper reception, Zaraki didn’t have a doubt in his mind that when it came time for the dance, he’d drag his partner out onto the stage, only look back, suddenly, to find Kurotsuchi’s amputated arm in his grasp, and the man, himself, skittering off into the darkness like a lizard. 

Kurotsuchi didn’t do parties or pleasantries. It just wasn’t in his nature.

“Yeah, the wedding’s this spring. But just because I’m marrying the guy doesn’t mean I ever liked him,” he laughed. Completely hidden from sight, however, Zaraki snaked his arm beneath the table and placed his hand over Kurotsuchi’s thigh, stroking his thumb against his knee. Though he never once looked down and though he never saw it coming, Zaraki felt Kurotsuchi’s hand slip over his own, for a moment. Their fingers brushed together, just a ghost of a touch, before his lover pulled away, returning to his paperwork as though nothing had happened at all. “Me and Kurotsuchi have always hated each other. Don’t want things to get too personal.”


End file.
